Posted by Jason Diamond Everybody and their mother, father, great uncle, and babies daddies are talking about the first Sufjan track off his upcoming album, The Age of Adz. And for good reason: it’s fucking incredible. It’s weird, glitchy, Prince-y, pretty, and all sort of other things that make me feel good. Listen: Sufjan Stevens – “I Walked” This Small Black track, “Photojournalist,” sounds like a weeble wobble dance party or a warped cassette tape of The Lost Boys soundtrack. […]
Bites: Big Screen Risk, Blossoming Literary Bromance, Vonnegut Makeover, Folks Covering Punks, Doomsday FAIL, and More
Little known fact: The editors of this site are huge fans of the board game Risk. We aren’t totally sure how we feel about a movie adaptation starring the Fresh prince of Bel-Air though. Lit. The Faster Times takes a look at McSweeney’s taking a stab at making a newspaper. Three Guys One Book really, really like The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats by Hesh Kestin, but they don’t have a crush on the author. Colin Meloy of the band […]
Bites: An Andy Warhol, Unstoppable Eggers, Paris Review, Stephen King Doing Vampires, Chuck Biscuits Ain’t Dead, Sufjan, and more.
A bunch of people at the New York Review of Books ask that question “What is an Andy Warhol?” I guess this self-portrait would count. Lit. You can’t stop another Dave Eggers-related film from being made. You just can’t “Hyperbolic? Perhaps, but the sentiment is genuine.” Chuck Palahniuk’s blog weighs in on the Paris Review Interviews. So does The Millions. Richard Rushfield wrote a book about going to Hampshire College, and likes Pere Ubu, Joy Division, and Dinosaur Jr. I […]
Bites: Mobycons, Gaiman’s Twitter, The Road, Bo Diddley’s beat, and more
Some guy at NYU “intends to turn all 6,438 sentences of the great Herman Melville (Moby-Dick)opus into Japanese Emoji, rather picturesque emoticons that are on most handsets in Japan.” Lit. Lit Drift talks about Neil Gaiman’s Twitter fiction contest. Melville House named best small press of the year! Maud Newton talks R. Crumb and Chick tract’s. Featherproof Books has an iPhone app. (thanks The Scowl) The Millions gives us a comedic translation of The Road. L Magazine talks to writer […]
Bites: Stephen Elliott in Williamsburg, McSweeney’s Broadsheet, the Original Gossip Girl, Lethem Recommends Poe, Balloon boy FAQ, and more
Stephen Elliott hung out in Williamsburg (went hard, if you will) and wrote about it on The Rumpus. Lit. Largehearted Boy reviews Nick Hornby’s Juliet, Naked. McSweeney’s to publish an old-fashioned, Sunday edition-sized broadsheet: San Francisco Panorama Jonathan Lethem recommends on Daily Beast Edgar Allen Poe’s only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, and describes it as “the missing link between Mary Shelley and Herman Melville.” My kind of narrative. On Willa Cather’s development as a novelist. […]
The BQE
By Laura Macomber In 2007, Sufjan Stevens added yet another tag to his résumé as musician, composer, lyricist, poet, writer, and overall-creative-soul: filmmaker. His short film, entitled The BQE, is a self-described “visual travelogue” of New York City’s poorly planned stretch of outer-borough highway and its surrounding neighborhoods, shot in 16 mm and Super 8. The film first premiered at BAM in November 2007, with Stevens performing the accompanying score, which he composed, live; now, two years later, he is […]
Bites: 9/11 novels, Nick Cave’s new book, Sufjan Stevens clip, Fashion and Tennis, the mind of Joe Wilson, and more
Lit The Daily Beast’s Sam Jacobs lists the 9/11 novels actually worth reading. “Welcoming Remarks Made at a Literary Reading, 9/25/01” at McSweeney’s Nick Cave (pictured above) talks about The Death of Bunny Munro (Thanks, Guardian) Michelle Huneven (Blame) picks songs for Largehearted Boy. The sentence “Dan Brown, is expected to pull a J.K. Rowling by single-handedly hauling the publishing industry out of the toilet” sends chills up my spine. (Thanks, January Magazine) Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago,” once […]
Sufjan Stevens and Cryptacize go on tour
By Jason Diamond Waking up on a Monday morning to news that Mr. Stevens (above) is taking the weirdo-pop trio of Cryptacize on the road is a splendid way to begin the week. Sufjan Stevens and Cryptacize 2009 tour 09-21: Philadelphia, PA – Johnny Brenda’s 09-22: Philadelphia, PA – Johnny Brenda’s 09-23: Ithaca, NY – Castaways 09-24: Cleveland, OH – Beachland Ballroom 09-25: Pontiac, MI – The Pike Room 09-26: Champaign, IL – The High Dive 09-27: Minneapolis, MN – […]