Bites

Afternoon Bites: Postal Service Auditions, PEN/Faulkner Nominees, Matt Bell Interviewed, Illuminati Girl Gang, and More

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“We live in a world that for the most part does not value what we do as writers and in response we waste our time complaining about degrees and pedigrees instead of making the big art that might actually silence our critics—or at least bring new readers back into the fold.” Matt Bell says smart things at Nineteen Questions. There is a comprehensive look at the writing of Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Observer. Also, both of these make us very excited: […]

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Bites

Afternoon Bites: On “Sabbath’s Theater,” The Novels of Laird Hunt, Pieter Schoolwerth, and More

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Matthew Specktor explains why you should read Philip Roth’s Sabbath’s Theater. Maris Kreizman’s best books of 2012. Vol.1 Brooklyn’s Tobias Carroll has an in-depth look at the fiction of Laird Hunt at the Los Angeles Review of Books. The Millions’ A Year in Reading has begun. Hyperallergic has a look at the paintings of Pieter Schoolwerth. Molly Ringwald is developing a television series described as “John Hughes-esque.” Anne Swan talks about her story “Emote Control” with Joyland. Follow Vol. 1 Brooklyn […]

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Indexing

Indexing: Bradbury signs, Gang Gang Dance DJs, Jo Walton’s “Among Others,” Johnny after The Smiths, and much more

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A roundup of things consumed by our contributors. Tobias Carroll “She was looking at a record called Anarchy in the U.K. by a group called the Sex Pistols. It was a very ugly cover, but I am quite interested in anarchism because of The Dispossessed.” That’s from Jo Walton’s Among Others, a novel set in 1979 about a young woman named Morwenna attending an English boarding school. She reads voraciously; she expounds at length on the science fiction and fantasy that she’s encountering, and this […]

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Bites

Afternoon Bites: Sara Levine, Dagmara Dominczyk, Laird Hunt, and more

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“I wanted to build a voice that was beholden to French literature, and particularly to its avant-garde wing, which had such a huge impact on my writing from the outset, but was kind of polluted with my own voice, which is very American, I think, and specifically Los Angeles-centric in its flatness and in its attempt to induce some kind of poetic trance within its limitations.” At Huffington Post, Brian Joseph Davis chats with Dennis Cooper. “[P]ointlessly smart, Waugh-ly arch, […]

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Books

Right Now at This Very Second: Laird Hunt’s got a Story at The Brooklyn Rail

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Posted by Tobias Carroll Via Dustin at The Towering Irrelevance comes news of a new Laird Hunt story, up at The Brooklyn Rail’s website. It’s called “Dark Charlie,” and its existence is a fine piece of news for fans of good literature. The bar K. had in mind served “ice cold draughts,” in pre-chilled Mason jars, and after we had made ourselves the close, personal friends of a few of these, we settled into comfortable leans in a fragrant semi-dark […]

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Books

Reviewed: Ray of the Star by Laird Hunt

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Coffee House Press, 2009, 194 p. Review by Tobias Carroll Laird Hunt knows his familiar and his unfamiliar. Indiana, Indiana illuminated the oddly shaped intimacies of a quiet Midwestern life, while The Exquisite summoned up ominous conspiracies alongside a strikingly realistic portrait of a few blocks in New York’s East Village. Ray of the Star opens in the Midwest, but quickly relocates to a European city of street artists, restless ghosts, and conspiracies. Written by Hunt in six weeks and […]

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