Afternoon Bites: Happy Birthday Sub Pop, Michael Chabon Doing “Casanova,” Literary Baseball, and More

“Since they first reunited in 1985, Wire has had an exceptionally weird relationship to its own past. During their commercial peak in the latter half of the 80s, they refused to play anything from the pre-breakup era, and for the first few years of their current incarnation, they mostly acted as if they’d jumped straight from Pink Flag to the year 2000.” Douglas Wolk on the latest — kind of — from Wire. What, exactly, has steampunk done to alternate history novels? If you […]

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The Reading Life: “Shooting an Elephant” and Orwell’s Clarity

I once wanted to be a lawyer, and being a paralegal was a stop on the way to where I thought I wanted to go. To get to 100 Church Street I took the M15 bus down a road where pedestrians were not allowed, past 1 Police Plaza and the courthouse named for Daniel Patrick Moynihan, stopping in front of J&R Electronics. I would walk through the park to Broadway. I would get a large coffee at Dunkin Donuts. The whole thing felt less […]

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Morning Bites: Proust and (Maybe) Bellow’s Birthday, Goodbye Bookstore, Making New Haven Angry and More

Marcel Proust,  Nikola Tesla, Ronnie James Dio and maybe Saul Bellow were both born on this day. There’s a Christopher Hitchens essay on George Orwell in this month’s Vanity Fair. At Book Riot: Eulogy for an Evanston, Il. bookstore that one Vol. 1 contributor used to visit. Jennifer Miller lists three books on scandalous teachers at NPR. Elizabeth Greenwood talks Magic Mike at The New Inquiry. That time GANT pissed off all of New Haven. Follow Vol. 1 Brooklyn on Twitter, Facebook, Google + and our Tumblr.

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Morning Bites: Purim Hunger Games, Updike Reissued, Letters From Huxley, “Keep Calm and Carry On,” And More

What the Jewish holiday of Purim (which begins tonight) has in common with the Hunger Games trilogy by Abigail Miller at Tablet. John Updike is getting reissued for his birthday. What did Aldous Huxley think of George Orwell’s 1984?  He wrote his former student a letter to tell him. Slate talks about the #jonathanfranzenhates Twitter hashtag after Jami Attenberg finds out J. Franz doesn’t like Twitter. Critical Mob takes a look at Jewish literature from the 1950s to today. The history of […]

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Morning Bites: Chabon cover, Columbia College lays off fiction, “Animal Farm” hope, Israeli author protection program, and more

That’s the Stax Records/60s bubblegum/Soul Train inspired cover of Michael Chabon’s forthcoming Telegraph Avenue.  (Via Sarah Weinman’s Twitter) While you’re at AWP in Chicago, you should stop by Columbia College and see why they’re laying off the Chair of the Fiction Writing Department.  Seems worth checking out. Your Longread suggestion of the day is at The Atlantic: “How ‘Animal Farm’ Gave Hope to Stalin’s Refugees.” Then move on to this Los Angeles Review of Books essay on Bruno Schulz. They’re […]

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