Afternoon Bites: Inside Numero Group, Talking With Ned Vizzini, Jami Attenberg on Kelly Clarkson, and More

Spin has an in-depth look at the excellent Chicago-based reissue label Numero Group. Jami Attenberg on Kelly Clarkson. (That’s really all you need to know, I’d say.) Ken Baumann and Ned Vizzini sat down for a conversation at HTML Giant. Emma Straub is in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, and that is a fine thing. Moby Lives has a chat with Kevin Sampsell of Future Tense Press and Powell’s. That time Bob Dylan met Paul Westerberg… There is no way you […]

Continue Reading

Morning Bites: Philip Roth’s nonexistent Nobel, Truffaut’s Bradbury, vampire Jews, and more

Winter is coming (well, the holiday shopping season is, but winter nonetheless), and it’s getting everybody really psyched about the impending Kindle Fire vs. iPad wars.  Slate and The Daily Beast weigh in. At The Millions: Can we please just give Philip Roth a fricken Nobel Prize already?  Until then, he’s just gonna keep chilling. Taking a look at Truffaut’s adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. This week will see the release of Arthur Conan Doyle’s long lost first novel, […]

Continue Reading

End of Day Rant: I Really Like Bob Dylan, but I’m Really Sick of Him

Posted by Jason Diamond I was thinking about this the other day: is there any other living artist whose work has been so picked apart for meaning in his lifetime?  I’m not ruling out the fact that there actually is, but seriously, Bob Dylan didn’t fulfill his role as the Second Coming of Christ in the 60s, so why do we keep talking about him like his lyrics were the work of a prophet? If you’re into the continued study […]

Continue Reading

Bites: On Herzog, Smut Saves Publishing, Sampsell’s Playlist, Bob Dylan the Phony and More

Ploughshares on Herzog. Einstein the agnostic. Publishing is going to be okay, thanks to smut. Kevin Sampsell gives Largehearted Boy a chapbooks worth of music he likes. Read about somebody listening to music in Montreal over at the McSweeney’s. If the “voice of the generation” turned out to be a phony, what would that mean?   Joni Mitchell accused Bob Dylan of plagiarism and The Daily Beast discusses it. Coffee House Press to put out another winner:  Big Other tells you […]

Continue Reading

Bashing Bob Dylan

Sometimes I think people hold Bob Dylan up to such godlike standards, that we tend to forget some of the great criticism the guy has drawn.  I was reminded of this today when reading the PopMatters essay on Greil Marcus, “Risk and Equilibrium: The Impact of Greil Marcus”. I could be wrong, but I doubt many other reviews that open up with the line “what is this shit” are as well remembered as the one Marcus wrote for Dylan’s 1970 […]

Continue Reading

Bites: Jodorowsky Interview, Amis Worries, Bob Dylan Gets Crazier, New Bolaño Translation, and More

Arthur posted a 2003 interview with Alejandro Jodorowsky.  It’s pretty epic. I think Martin Amis is worried about fading away. Proust, Darwin, and Andy Warhol: all hypochondriacs. First he finds Jesus, then puts out a Christmas album, now, Bob Dylan writes a fucking kids book. Lit Kicks interviews Walter Kirn, who wrote the book that got turned into a movie starring George Clooney. “William Burns” by Roberto Bolaño

Continue Reading