Afternoon Bites: Tom Waits, Superhero Philosophy, Zadie Smith Interviewed, and More

Talking Tom Waits at the Los Angeles Review of Books. “I’m not ever saying anything unusual, you know? I’m just trying to think about general things just a bit more specifically.” Zadie Smith is interviewed at The Rumpus. Thom Dunn on Jonathan Hickman’s philosophical superheroes. Jason Rice has good things to say about David Gilbert’s & Sons. New diary comic from Gabrielle Bell. Scott Snyder is interviewed about horror comics, retro photos, and Batman. Cory Doctorow on Warren Ellis’s hallucinatory-sounding procedural Gun Machine. […]

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When Zadie Smith Came To Brooklyn

Last Friday in Fort Greene, in shouting distance of Brooklyn’s brand new Barclays Center, you’d have been right to assume the queues on Lafayette Avenue were for a rockstar. Wall-to-wall, shoulder-to-shoulder, arms raised in air, (‘cos there’s zero elbow room down here…) – Zadie Smith popped by Greenlight Bookstore to sign copies of her latest, NW, from Penguin Press. “You lot were clearly too cheap to spring for Jay-Z tickets, or you’d not be spending Friday night in a bookshop,” […]

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Zadie Smith Shows You Around

Fact: three out of every five book trailers aren’t so good. While that number may startle you, I’m starting to think publishers are maybe starting to wise up to that fact, and that’s why they’re thinking of new and more clever ways to promote their books. One example would be Penguin getting Zadie Smith to read specific parts of NW that correspond with parts of a map. A much smarter (and I’m guessing more economical for the publishers) way of engaging […]

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Morning Bites: Updating DFW, Robber Barons, Zadie’s First Lines, Frank Ocean and More

Journalistically speaking, there is no hot news to offer you about Roger Federer. He is, at 25 30, the best tennis player currently alive. – Updating David Foster Wallace’s “Federer as Religious Experience.” Originally published in 2006. The Millions have the first lines of Zadie Smith’s NW. Updike’s Bech stories reviewed at The New Republic. America’s first female robber barron. The New York Times profiles Frank Ocean. Follow Vol. 1 Brooklyn on Twitter, Facebook, Google + and our Tumblr.

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Afternoon Bites: Zadie Reads O’Hara, Fiona Sings Macca, Nike Sells and Sells, and more

It’s going to be unbearably hot this week. Can someone farther downtown get us an ice cream sandwich? They’re not businessmen; they’re a business, man. A great essay on punk skaters and Nike’s insidious strategy for selling to them. Zadie Smith reads Frank O’Hara’s “Animals,” and we swoon. Fiona Apple covered Paul McCartney on Jimmy Fallon’s show last night, and at least one Vol. 1 editor freaked out. An architecturally inspired tanning booth begets an article in LA Weekly that […]

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