Afternoon Bites: Blake Butler on Dennis Cooper, John Cage, Avid Bookshop, and more

“From the very first sentence, we still find the familiar wicked slant of Cooper’s perennial knack for penetrative dialogue (in more than one sense, and  with a degree of simultaneous awe and terror that I believe is unmatched in fiction), though the trajectory of it has been bent again.” Blake Butler reviews Dennis Cooper’s new novel The Marbled Swarm. (We’ll be hosting Cooper in conversation with Brandon Stosuy in two weeks.) At Tin House’s blog: the first installment of Rob Spillman’s culture […]

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Hell Yeah Justin Taylor

The fact that there’s even a debate on the Tin House “Buy a Book, Save a Bookstore” program is pretty absurd. Hats go off to Vol. 1 favorite Justin Taylor for his response in the HTMLGIANT comment section. (Scroll down to see all of Taylor’s comment): “If patronizing a physical bookstore in order to purchase a new book at its full retail value strikes you as morally derelict in some way, then you have no business asking Tin House Books–or […]

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Best of 2009: Books

Tobias Carroll’s picks Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem Midnight Picnic by Nick Antosca Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler AM/PM by Amelia Gray Lowboy by John Wray The Other City by Michal Ajvaz Asta in the Wings by Jan Elizabeth Watson Between Jan Elizabeth Watson’s novel of a brother and sister raised in isolation and Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor, this was a good year for novels evoking childhood. Both Watson and Whitehead deftly suggest their narrators’ adult destinies with a few […]

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Bites: Willy Loman Gets Some Respect, Gladwell Writes a Letter, Chomsky’s Eye, Beth Ditto as a Hero, Oprah Fucks Over the Book Industry, and More

“He’s not the finest character that ever lived. But he’s a human being”.  Actually Linda Loman, I think in regards to your husband, it’s the other way around. According to this list, your husband Willy stands alongside The Wandering Jew, Betty Boop, and Shylock as the 100 most influential people who never lived. Lit. Gore Vidal rips William F. Buckley.  No response from Buckley, because he’s dead. Leo Tolstoy is also dead.  Today is the anniversary of him dying. Malcolm […]

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Happening: A Night at The Highline

Tonight, The Rumpus and Tin House team up for an epic night whose lineup reads like a laundry list of people we really, really like: Stephen Elliott hosts an evening that features (among others) Eugene Mirman, Todd Barry, Rick Moody, Starlee Kine, and Jonathan Ames, at The Highline Ballroom. Considering a few of those people have had pretty big years, we would like to think they might get some of their even more famous friends to show up, making this […]

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Weekend Bites: Dyson on Illmatic, National Bookstore Day, Bolaño “myth building”, Sesame Street, Dirty Projectors, and More.

Michael Eric Dyson wrote a book on Nas and his landmark album, Illmatic that is due out in January. Born to Use Mics is discussed in a few places: Nah Right Pitchfork Daily Swarm Lit. Philip Gourevitch is leaving the Paris Review. The Rumpus discusses Sigrid Nunez’s memoir relationship with Susan Sontag in the new issue of Tin House. Happy National Bookstore Day! Is the “myth building” around Bolaño getting to be too much? The Guardian reviews James Ellroy’s Blood’s […]

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