Posted by Jason Diamond The title of this post is the answer to the question, “What do Jonathan Franzen, Jennifer Egan, Sam Lipsyte, George R. R. Martin, Jonathan Ames, Michael Chabon, Malcolm Gladwell, and now Karen Russell all have in common?” From The Hollywood Reporter: HBO is going to Florida with Scott Rudin. The premium cable network has picked up Swamplandia, a half-hour comedy project from Rudin based on Karen Russell’s book of the same name.
Lit Crawling through NYC
Posted by Jon Reiss Last Saturday’s NYC Lit Crawl began at 6 PM in the East Village and ended at around 9 in the Lower East Side. The event, which was sponsored by likes of heavy lit-ters such as Granta, Harper Perennial and Craig from Craigslist, offered a smorgasbord of mainly light-hearted often-silly events. Bomb’s “Bomb-aoke” at Bowery Electric, for instance, promised a karaoke-meets interviews format where crawlers could take the stage, pretending to be one of the many artists […]
Indexing: Brontë for kicks, Lipsyte update, James Salter, The Brothers Karamazov, and more
Spending money on Spotify, reading something for kicks, Lev Grossman, Law and Order, and so much more of what is interesting folks in Vol. 1 land.
Indexing: Palace Brothers, Jesse Ball, Lipsyte going short, Marquee Moon 33 1/3, and more
Our weekly roundup of what we’ve been reading, hearing, and paying attention to includes some Sam Lipsyte, Jesse Ball, earlier Will Oldham, and more.
Bites: Spinozamania, Reagan the Greatest (???), Lipsyte Hates Cheats, Oscarless Hitchcock, Emma “The Real Deal” Straub and More
Part 3 of The Guardian’s fantastic series on Baruch Spinoza. Part 1 can be found here, part 2 here. Sam Lipsyte hates cheaters. Why do students want to go to more elite colleges? Glad people are catching on that “Emma Straub is the real deal.” Alfred Hitchcock never won on Oscar. A good chunk of the population think Ronald Reagan is the greatest president ever.
Favorite Books of 2010
Posted by Jason Diamond Note: This list doesn’t reflect the view of anybody else involved with Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and yes, I do realize it’s a mix of fiction and non. Sorry. 1. The Possessed by Elif Batuman I don’t believe that anybody on this planet is either the smartest or funniest person alive. But if I am in fact wrong, I believe Ms. Batuman could easily hold down both titles. In the least cheesiest way I can possibly say […]
2 Things I Might Never get Sick of: Sam Lipsyte and Pete’s Candy Store
By Jason Diamond In a land (Williamsburg) where sweet bars have gone away without a fight, Pete’s Candy Store has continued to thrive, and has been doing the same cool programing for ten years. It’s one of the only bars left in the northern part of Brooklyn where I don’t walk in to room where the douchebags outnumber the non-douchebags. To celebrate ten years of being unfriendly to douchebags, they’re getting Sam Lipsyte to read, this Thursday. I never get […]
Pondering Underrated Writers
What makes a writer “underrated”? I’m only asking, because apparently several writers I really like are underrated, and I’m not exactly sure what this means. I’m working with a few scenarios here, because I feel like the writers below could easily be classified as “underrated,” considering that people I think of as “big names,” like Deborah Eisenberg, Stephen Elliott, and Sam Lipsyte are on the list. Example: if say, fifty people buy The Instructions by Adam Levin (god forbid), but […]