#tobyreads: Mixing Pop and Politics? We Can Do That.

  I’d be surprised if this week’s events haven’t made you think about politics in at least some capacity: there’s been plenty to mull over and plenty to debate; events to inspire and events to infuriate. And so it’s not too surprising that much of my recent reading has also involved questions of political affiliation, radicalism and compromise, and issues that steadily avoid an easy resolution.

Continue Reading

Morning Bites: Dash Shaw’s Latest, Larry David, “The Rite of Spring” Visualized, Inside Mellow Pages, and More

Looking at New World, the latest graphic novel from Dash Shaw. “But so often when novelists try to do a scene that deals with the art world, if they get the smallest thing wrong, the whole thing––the whole ship sinks. You have to know the codes.” Rachel Kushner talked with The Believer. Hitchhiking with Larry David. Joshuah Bearman: interviewed by The Rumpus. Talking with the folks behind the community library and reading room known as Mellow Pages. Someone made a visual version […]

Continue Reading

Afternoon Bites: Rachel Kushner Interviewed, Richard Hell’s Memoir, Dueling Black Flags, Soderbergh and John Barth, and More

“My whole trajectory as a novelist is maybe about finding the form and through line of a constructed world that can hold in it what I really think about . . . everything.” Hari Kunzru interviewed Rachel Kushner for BOMB. At The Talkhouse, Amy Rebecca Klein wrote about Spring Breakers. Zach Baron reviewed Richard Hell’s memoir for Bookforum. Jerry Saltz ponders the fate of gallery shows. Stephen Soderbergh might be adapting John Barth’s The Sot-Weed Factor. Douglas Wolk on Don Giovanni Records. The Los Angeles Times […]

Continue Reading