Willa Cather, Tom Waits, and Larry Bird all celebrate birthdays today. Who had the better jump shot? We’re going to go with Cather. At Tablet: Nazis and the work of Roberto Bolaño. Levi Asher on Vonnegut and Vonnegut biographies. Don’t want your mind wandering? A Yale study says to meditate. Jonny Greenwood to score P.T. Anderson’s The Master. Air teams up with Victoria Legrand of Beach House for the ultimate indie baby making collaboration. Follow Vol. 1 Brooklyn on Twitter, Facebook, and […]
Afternoon Bites: Ragnar Kjartansson, The Return of Achewood, Roberto Bolaño, and more
Last week, Chris Onstadt’s excellent comic Achewood returned after an eight-month hiatus. If you’ve heard good things about it but are curious to learn more, Chris Sims has provided a primer to the series. At The Faster Times, Dawn Marie Knopf reviews Roberto Bolaño’s Tres. Jerry Saltz on Ragnar Kjartansson’s Bliss: “Instead of seeing narcissism, egomania, and glamorous existential suffering, I glean something Icelandic — a way of courting chaos with fortitude, a sense of the absurd and acceptance.” Adam […]
Morning Bites: “not beat poets,” last Sonic Youth show, Victorian hoarders, animating Bolaño, and more
Today you should do birthday shots for Voltaire, Goldie Hawn, Björk, and Ken Griffey Jr. Robert Hass, the 70-year-old former Poet Laureate of the United States, writes an op-ed about being beaten by police at Occupy Berkeley. At Granta: Animating Bolaño. The Los Angeles Review of Books talks to Helen DeWitt. The Victorians: Original hoarders? 3:AM Magazine talks to Alina Simone. Ted Leo and Titus Andronicus are playing an OWS benefit in Brooklyn tonight. Possibly the last Sonic Youth show ever? […]
Quote of the day: Beirut on Bolaño
Q. Your new single is called “East Harlem,” and in your e-mail you said you like Bolaño because he has “the same idle and poetic amusement with city and street names” as you do. Are you reading him now? A. I’m reading “2666,” which is a monster of a book, that’ll last me all this tour. “The Savage Detectives” really got to me, these children acting as bohemians and this ennui. I read a review of Bolaño, and they were […]
Morning Bites: John Sinclair, Bolaño Poetry, Hanging at the Armory, and More
John Sinclair (above, middle) is interviewed at The Rumpus. Sixteen poems by Roberto Bolaño. Jon Cotner and Claire Hamilton spend four hours at the Armory. Deb Olin Unferth on the Bat Segundo Show. The BBC takes a look at Elizabeth Taylor’s life in film. A Weimar-era German “rail zeppelin” over at Boing Boing.
Odd Future and the Poetry of Violence
Posted by Jason Diamond Odd Future are hanging out with Charlie Sheen in the realm of “things I don’t need to hear anything else about.” That’s really no slight on them or their craft, it’s just that I spent the last week walking around in the hot Texas sun, hearing about Odd Future this and Odd Future that.
What Would George Plimpton Do (WWGPD?): Publish Roberto Bolaño
Posted by Jason Diamond Straight from the “Holy Shit Department.” Spring is almost here—and so is our spring issue! It’s an especially exciting one: We will be publishing Roberto Bolaño’s The Third Reich—our first serialized novel in forty years—with original illustrations by Leanne Shapton. This is a first edition like none other—a collector’s item, and a chance to discover Bolaño’s famous lost novel almost a year before it appears in book form. (Via Paris Review)
Weekend Bites: Tiny Shteyngart, PoMo, Dennis Cooper on Shoegaze, Liberal Books, and More
Edward Champion towers over Gary Shteyngart at BEA. The umpire who cost Armando Galarraga his perfect game, could be related to James Joyce. All postmodern roads lead to Shreck 4. College books are too left-leaning. So? Good literary romances. At least they admit that so much has already been written about Bolaño. Dennis Cooper discusses Shoegaze.