Posted by Jason Diamond My girlfriend doesn’t understand my obsession with the Cranky Kaplan and Wise Kaplan. But really, what’s not to love? The two guys behind the Twitter accounts, Peter Stevenson and Jim Windolf, will be reading together live tomorrow at Happy Ending. I’d go, but I’ll be stuck being a good Jew on Yom Kippur.
Genius is @EmperorFranzen/Freedom Fever Reaches a Fever Pitch Today/FTW
Huffington Post Books Attempts to Create Bret Easton Ellis Scoop, Fails
Huffington Post Books tweeted that Bret Easton Ellis had broken his silence over controversial Twitter comments he made right after J.D. Salinger died. Me and about fifteen other dorks would really care, but the thing is, he talked about that months ago in an interview with Vice: Well, you’ve written my favorite Twitter that anybody’s ever written. What? The Salinger one. On the day he died, you posted: “Yeah!! Thank God he’s finally dead. I’ve been waiting for this day […]
Paris Review Names a New Editor/Twitter Blows tha Fuck Up/George Plimpton Weeps Angel Tears
From the press release: Lorin Stein will succeed Philip Gourevitch as the editor of The Paris Review in April of 2010, it was announced today by the board of directors of The Paris Review Foundation. “Lorin has an uncommon literary sensibility and eye for new talent,” said Antonio Weiss, publisher of the nonprofit quarterly that Time recently called “America’s greatest literary journal.” “The Paris Review has thrived during Philip’s five-year tenure as editor,” Weiss said, “and we look forward to […]
Weekend Bites, The Frightening Edition: Keats Misdiagnosed?, the Penis as Literary Device, ScarJo to Rape Arthur Miller’s Work, Truths in Ghostbusters, and Why M&M’s Might As Well Be Crack
Happy Halloween! In honor of the spooky holiday, Vol.1 has collected some particularly frightening Bites, ranging from the traditionally fun-filled, the absolutely outraging, and the sadly serious. Lit. Did medical malpractice lead to the death of John Keats, leaving the poet starving and anguished? Wait, isn’t that what poets are definitively? After losing his own book deal, South Carolina governor Mark Sanford praises Ayn Rand. In a review of Alistair Morgan’s Sleeper’s Wake, The Rumpus expostulates on the penis as […]
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” […]
The Millennials Will Usher in a New Age of Literacy
Over and over again are there complaints about our Twitter-obsessed minds, our over-texting tendencies, and the fact that no one actually reads books anymore. On the path to illiteracy, are we? Developing a generation of Adderall-induced, emoticon-using, pathetically apathetic individuals? Think again, please.
Bites: Reading Rainbow, Doctorow’s latest, a Twitter opera, and more
R.I.P. Butterfly in the Sky. (If you can’t place the line, Reading Rainbow is dead.) E.L Doctorow’s new novel Homer and Langley is ready, and reviewers can’t stop comparing it to Ragtime. Okay, he’s a “special genius for ellipsis,” blah blah blah. Whatever, “the scandalous allure of a New York tabloid series” is totally exciting to me. On the High Line, there is a new art installation visible especially at night. While not naked hotel-guests, the exhilerating sense of that […]