Philip Roth Can’t Win

Sometimes we wonder whether Philip Roth gets more annoyed with all the Nobel Prizes he doesn’t win year after year, or all the chatter about said lack of prizes. Whatever the case, Juli Weiner at Vanity Fair does point out one bit of hilarious coincidence having to do with another Roth who did win a Nobel for economics this year: “Alvin Roth is the name of a character in a book by the Nobel-less Philip Roth. What book? Literally—literally—literally: The […]

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Damn It Feels Good To Be Blake Bailey

It isn’t awesome enough for Blake Bailey that W.W. Norton & Company has picked up “Philip Roth: The Biography,” but they also decided to throw him some cash for the opportunity to publish his own memoir. So that means while we have to wait “8 to 10 years” for Bailey to finish up his work on Roth, we can fill the gap by reading his forthcoming biography on Charles Jackson in 2013, and in 2014 read about the life and times of a biographer. You […]

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Morning Bites: Philip Roth’s Birthday, Sarah Manguso, Emma Straub At The Museum, Presidential Brackets, And More

Philip Roth was born on this day in 1933. Sarah Manguso talks to Brad Listi at the Other People podcast. Philip Lopate reviews the collection of John Leonard’s essays, Reading For My Life: Writings, 1958-2008, for the New York Times. Emma Straub goes to the Museum of Natural History for Rookie. At Harpers, Scott Horton asks Masha Gessen six questions.  Gessen’s The Man Without a Face is reviewed in this week’s New Yorker . What President Obama’s NCAA brackets say […]

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Afternoon Bites: Christgau on Lethem, Sarah Glidden on Occupy Miami, Bittman on Roth, and more

“At 47, Lethem is 11 years older than Mailer was in 1959, so he’s had time to get more reading in. But that’s hardly the biggest advantage of an omnivore who devoured a book a day on the subway in high school and has spent 15 years working in bookstores…” Robert Christgau reviews Jonathan Lethem’s nonfiction collection The Ecstasy of Influence. Sarah Glidden visits Occupy Miami. Keith Gessen on his arrest at Occupy Wall Street. Here’s a combination of writers […]

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Morning Bites: Tranströmer takeover, Roth’s consolation prize, Lev Grossman TV, and more

Real talk: Tomas Tranströmer won the Nobel Prize for literature, and we’ve never read any of his work.  But that doesn’t stop us from thinking the cover for his “20 Poems” is really cool. Philip Roth didn’t win (again…), but he’s been shortlisted for an award celebrating medicine in literature. Steve Jobs gave us our choice of fonts. This whole Lev Grossman book becoming a movie thing is really awesome news. Joshua Cohen says Yizkor (remembrance) for books. Ethan Nosowsky […]

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Morning Bites: Philip Roth’s nonexistent Nobel, Truffaut’s Bradbury, vampire Jews, and more

Winter is coming (well, the holiday shopping season is, but winter nonetheless), and it’s getting everybody really psyched about the impending Kindle Fire vs. iPad wars.  Slate and The Daily Beast weigh in. At The Millions: Can we please just give Philip Roth a fricken Nobel Prize already?  Until then, he’s just gonna keep chilling. Taking a look at Truffaut’s adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. This week will see the release of Arthur Conan Doyle’s long lost first novel, […]

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Morning Bites: Geoff Dyer Mexican Standoff, Philip Roth Profiled, Bill Murray, And More

Luc Sante on Geoff Dyer at Bookforum.  Scott Esposito on Luc Sante on Geoff Dyer at Conversational Reading. Profiling the entire career of Philip Roth in just under 300 words. We live in magical times when Bill Murray plays FDR. L Magazine talks to The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Jim Henson’s 1969 pilot for “The Wizard of Id.” How did this not become a show?

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