Abraham Lincoln the Vampire Slayer

We have said all we could about zombies.  In fact, we were really counting on Bob Powers to be right with his claim that werewolves are the right monster for these times, and maybe put the undead back in their graves.  But no, Seth Grahame-Smith had to go and screw everything up again by announcing that in March, 2010, he is putting out Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.  So now instead of zombies we get a dead president killing blood suckers. […]

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A Brief History of the Modern Zombie, or Why I Hate Zombie Lit

by Willa A. Cmiel For as much as we like to talk about and link to zombies here at Vol. 1, I really think the trend is, to put it nicely, pretty silly. To be truly frank, I actually find it immensely, offensively, near-tragically awful. (It’s true that I’ve written about this before.) Historically, zombie mythology originated in West Indian Voodoo lore, and was taken and misinterpreted by Western society (Night of the Living Dead). And then we took it […]

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Online Comic Strip Figures Out Zombie-Lit Phenomenon

Turns out, it’s the boys who are to blame!  Because the girls totally get it.   Unshelved is an online comic book set in a public library. Every Sunday for “Book Club,” they publish a guest post, which features a different book every week.  This week, Pride and Prejudice.  Are zombies involved?  Sea monsters?, one character wonders.  No way!, says the other.  Vol. 1 has discussed the zombie-lit trend in the past–more than once, in fact–and plans to continue doing so […]

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Bites: Klosterman Gets Married and Bad Journalism Ensues, Gore Vidal Gets Nostalgic, Infinite Book Clubs, and more

Chuck Klosterman got married, and journalistic ethics are called into question.  Also, the article in question is lame. Lit. Gore Vidal is a man of letters, which is inherently at least mostly respectable.  His recent interview with the Times is filled with wisdom, albeit sharp and abrasive. The Desk Set hipped us to Abe Books Weird Book Room.  Thanks. Infinite Summer, the D.F.W-reading online book club, has climbed their Everest.  To celebrate, they’re reading Dracula.  Yep.  Honestly, I’m into book […]

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Bites: Turdsworth, the man who makes Pekar tweet, The Twilight Sad, and more

Romantics get saucy!  Lord Byron referred to William Wordsworth as “Turdsworth” in a letter.  Now somebody can own that letter, and many others by the poet. Are we excited seeing trailers for the new Wes Anderson film, Fantastic Mr. Fox?  Yes we are. Lit. Jeff Newelt: The man, the myth, the dude who tweets for Harvey Pekar. Nick Cave: “An aspirant solipsist” Starbucks saved a life, but how was the book? After all this zombie talk, it was finally time […]

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Bites: The return of Lemony Snicket, Bob Dylan at the controls, zombies, Marvel Comics, Sen. Alec Baldwin, and more.

I really liked the first few Lemony Snicket books, and then there were a few hundred more.  Now we get news that we can expect four more.  I’m alright with this, as long as there is no more movies with Jim Carrey involved. We really like to talk about zombies; this essay on The Morning News does it far better than just about anything we have ever posted. I smell a challenge, or possibly the stench of the undead. So […]

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Weekend Bites: New York nostalgia, Dzanc’s new lit mag, the Seinfeld effect, Jane Austen’s syllabus, bit.ly is bad?, Brooklyn’s Stairway to Heaven

For Bookforum, Philip Nobel’s review essay on The Eternal City: “Despite New Yorkers’ powerful nostalgia for the Gotham-that-was, the city’s urban ecology has always thrived on change.” There’s a new monthly online lit mag, The Collagist, by Dzanc Books. Field Guide to the Snob: The Seinfeld Effect. Like Jane Austen? Don’t read zombie lit! Read some of these books instead. Are shortened url’s bad for the health of the web? Finally, has Google found a Stairway to Heaven in Brooklyn??

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Monday Bites: literary duels, giant guinea pigs, poets being selfish, pynchon reviews, daria, david cronenberg picks delillo’s worst book

Good morning! Did you know that Dostoevsky once challenged Turgenev to a duel? I ask, with swords?? Do famous writers still duel? Norman Mailer probably did. And Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel Garcia Marquez sort of managed, although it was more of a one-punch deal. On literary feuds. Giant guinea pigs trump boy wizards, apparently. The Daily Beast interviews Jeffrey Eugenides, who was fired from his desk job at the Academy of American Poets for writing parts of The Virgin […]

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