They found Capt. Ahab’s boat! Dick Watching will be blowing up this week!
Bites: A Martin Amis Kids Book (?), Pushkin’s Death, Party Down, Video Game Music and More
Want Martin Amis (above) to write a book for your kids? Here’s what has to happen. “The editor of an internationally renowned literary magazine once accused me to my face of sleeping my way to the top. I had been recommended to him for a job, and apparently the fellow writer who recommended me did so vigorously, and defended me against the accusation of hack-work.” via Bookslut Nifty Elliott Smith-themed cover on the new issue of Puerto del Sol. Talking […]
Bites: Mel Bosworth’s Book, Sloane Crosley’s Grandmother, Rhys Chatham’s Car Commercial and More
Mel Bosworth’s book, Freight, is set to come out sometime this year on Folded Word Press. We published an excerpt from the book for our first Sunday Story of 2011. Sloane Crosley talks about her “hardcore” Jewish grandmother. Warren Ellis has a few thoughts on Casino Royale. Let’s talk about the “Great American Novel,” shall we? Never thought that Rhys Chatham’s music would be used to sell cars, but apparently anything is possible. (Via Chris Weingarten’s Twitter)
Dick Watching: The Shark Massacre
Posted by Juliet Linderman Hey there Dick Watchers and welcome to the Wednesday edition of everyone’s favorite sea-tastic cetacean link list! Hop on the boat and let’s go! There’s a sick whale swimming around the waters of Hawaii, and though this happens all the time, this poor guy is in such bad shape I thought I’d include it. His back is broken, making for a very strange looking impressionistic kind of creature. The big guy’s all melted, poor thing.
Bites: Ayn Rand Dating, Norman Mailer Fighting, Denis Johson Reading and More
Ron Hogan wants you to read The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore by Benjamin Hale. This is what an Ayn Rand dating site would look like. Mailer vs. Vidal, Hemingway vs. everybody who bothered him when he was drunk, and other good literary fights. A video of Denis Johnson reading. Don’t worry everybody: Huffington Post will not turn AOL leftist. So all of you people who were thinking that would be the case, please rest a little bit easier.
Bites: The Real Cheever, Jules Verne Google, Bad Reviews, Dead Rabbis Writing Letters and More
Get to know the real John Cheever. (Left, with John Updike) Google goes steampunk for the birthday of Jules Verne. Emily St. John Mandel discusses bad reviews. A dead rabbi writes a letter to a literary critic from beyond the grave. Eugene Mirman does a pretty good Bill O’Reilly impersonation considering he looks and sounds nothing like him. James Dean would have been 80 today.
There Goes the Internet
Posted by Juliet Linderman We all shut down our laptops for a few hours to watch the Superbowl and this happens. Late last night, AOL acquired the Huffington Post for $315 million and now basically runs the whole internet. AOL has been busy recently. They launched Patch.com, their attempt to make community newspapers obsolete, and bought Tech Crunch to keep up with the world of technology. As a result of the merger, AOL’s expected to fold their own not-so-popular blogs like […]
Bites: Karen Russell all Over the Place, Remembering Reagan, Spinoza, Rick Moody on Rock Books and More
Karen Russell talks to the Bat Segundo Show about her latest book, Swamplandia! The book was also the cover story for the Sunday Book Review. To celebrate 100 years of Reagan, Mother Jones digs up a 1984 issue that included Kurt Vonnegut, Studs Terkel, Al Franken and a bunch of fantastic artwork that tries to imagine what four more years of The Gipper would hold. “I am putting my money on Spinoza and not on Descartes.” – Commentator for this […]