Jim Shepard for Electric Literature on the subject of fiction based on non-fiction: “We need to bear in mind, as we’ve been told many times, that we’re working from, but not necessarily about, our lives.” Lit. Edgar Allen Poe gets a real funeral. (Thanks, The Rumpus) On Vanity Fair’s website, take Proust’s Questionnaire and find out which celebrities you most resemble. Lev Grossman guest-posts for and on the National Book Critics Circle blog. Film, a Quick Weekend Roundup What will […]
Bites: Is New York Bad for Writers?, Should Bookstores Rethink Shelving?, East of Eden as Performance, the Death of the Man of Letters, How to Get Rid of Hipsters, and more
HTMLGiant asks if New York for writers is The Place to Be, or whether it’s just too damn expensive. Lit. Should bookstores shelve by publisher rather than author? (Thanks, The Rumpus) How East of Eden became a performance piece. A surprisingly interesting picture essay of the last 10 years of Nobel Prize winners in literature. The “slow death of the man of letters”? Hm. Shakespeare’s endless Answers: Why it’s smart to be a Shakespearean fool. Books as art. Very cool. […]
Bites: Literary award kvetching, Bradbury paints, Obama is the big winner, Woods do Daytrotter, and more
Remember yesterday when I said more Jewish people will kvetch about Amos Oz or Philip Roth not getting the Nobel Prize for Literature? Tablet mentions the Tribe losing out, talks about Herta Mueller, and ties it all up with “Also intriguing: the Times notes that her father served in the SS during World War II.” Lit. Ray Bradbury was a regular Bob Ross. The Forward talks about Elie Wiesel’s “meandering, sometimes, narcissistic ruminations” on medieval French commentator of the Talmud […]
Nobel morning: A chronological breakdown of the days first few minutes
7:00 AMish Lev Grossman (via his Twitter) starts it off like this: 7:31 AM The news comes that Herta Mueller wins! Yippee! 7:35 AM I think back to this HTMLGiant post about a group of oddsmakers, and their picks for the prize. I scan for Mueller’s name, and find nothing. I think to myself “somewhere, somebody just hit the jackpot if they bet on her.” 7:37 AM My friend comes on Gchat to complain how the Nobel people are “antisemitic” […]
Bites: Beer with ‘Bama, blue M&Ms, Gawker is Gold(man Sachs), Muumuu House is noted, fake local Starbucks protests, etc.
DRINKS AT OBAMA’S THIS THURSDAY. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is in charge of the beer run, taking orders. (Is anything else important today? Not really, but in case of boredom read on.) There are two kinds of people in the world: those who separate M&Ms based on color and those who don’t. Always firmly in the latter group, I was forced briefly to question my firm stance upon learning that the food dye used in blue M&M’s can mend spinal […]