Bites: Stephen Elliott in Williamsburg, McSweeney’s Broadsheet, the Original Gossip Girl, Lethem Recommends Poe, Balloon boy FAQ, and more

Stephen Elliott hung out  in Williamsburg (went hard, if you will) and wrote about it on The Rumpus. Lit. Largehearted Boy reviews Nick Hornby’s Juliet, Naked. McSweeney’s to publish an old-fashioned, Sunday edition-sized broadsheet: San Francisco Panorama Jonathan Lethem  recommends on Daily Beast Edgar Allen Poe’s only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, and describes it as “the missing link between Mary Shelley and Herman Melville.” My kind of narrative. On Willa Cather’s development as a novelist. […]

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Bites: Fiction v. Non-Fiction, Poe’s Funeral, Proust’s Questions, Lev Grossman on being a critic, Wild Things, Hornby’s Education, Nick Cave & PJ Harvey, and more

Jim Shepard for Electric Literature on the subject of fiction based on non-fiction: “We need to bear in mind, as we’ve been told many times, that we’re working from, but not necessarily about, our lives.” Lit. Edgar Allen Poe gets a real funeral. (Thanks, The Rumpus) On Vanity Fair’s website, take Proust’s Questionnaire and find out which celebrities you most resemble. Lev Grossman guest-posts for and on the National Book Critics Circle blog. Film, a Quick Weekend Roundup What will […]

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Bites: Beast Books, Nick Hornby, Zeitoun haikus, Palin’s ghostwriter, and more

Daily Beast innovator Tina Brown is, in a joint venture with Perseus Books Group, starting a new imprint called Beast Books. The imprint will forgo the typical publishing schedule, which is, as Brown sees it, an untimely process that misses important opportunities to attract readers. At Book Beast, the entire process of writing and publishing (beginning with an e-book) will take a mere two to four months. Lit Nick Hornby interviewed at Flavorwire Write a haiku and you could get […]

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Weekend Bites: Dave Eggers is like John Wayne but with a pen, Raymond Carver, Jon Ronson, Bjork and Barney kaput?, Hornby hearts LHB, and more.

Three Guys One Book: “Where have all the cowboys gone? Has literature isolated itself from a bigger cultural context?”  Dave Eggers, Zadie Smith, Dennis Johnson, Gary Shteyngart, and the New York Times bestsellers of 1943 all make cameos. Jacket Copy asks: “How much of (Raymond) Carver’s “minimalist” style was a byproduct of (Gordon) Lish’s editing?”  This 1997 New Yorker article provided as reference, and this review of the Library of America release of “Raymond Carter: Collected Stories” might shed sufficient […]

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Weekend Bites: Dave Eggers is like John Wayne with a pen, Raymond Carver, Jon Ronson, Bjork and Barney kaput?, Hornby hearts LHB, and more.

Three Guys One Book: “Where have all the cowboys gone? Has literature isolated itself from a bigger cultural context?”  Dave Eggers, Zadie Smith, Dennis Johnson, Gary Shteyngart, and the New York Times bestsellers of 1943 all make cameos. Jacket Copy asks: “How much of (Raymond) Carver’s “minimalist” style was a byproduct of (Gordon) Lish’s editing?”  This 1997 New Yorker article provided as reference, and this review of the Library of America release of “Raymond Carter: Collected Stories” might shed sufficient […]

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