Bites: The Shining pt. 2, Lethem in Manhattan, Rimbaud, Turkey Holocaust Poetry, Grass Widow on WFMU, and More

Danny, he said, was certain to have been left “with a lifetime’s worth of emotional scars” after his experiences at the Overlook, where his father was possessed by the hotel, tried to kill him and his mother and eventually died. I’m going to guess two things.  The first being Stephen King isn’t going to name the sequel to The Shining, The Shining 2: Danny Torrance Boogaloo.   Secondly, I’m guessing he’s not going to get Stanley Kubrick to do the film […]

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Bites: Zadie Smith, Obama Bowing, Studs Terkel was a Watched Man, Pondering Proust, End of the Decade Lists, New Moon vs. Gilmore Girls, and More

SF Chronicle and L.A. Times both review Zadie Smith’s Changing My Mind.  The Millions comment on the reviews “non-committal, guarded praise” and go on to call it “wunderkind jealousy”. The Guardian says of Smith, “criticism is a bodily pleasure“. Time Out New York weighs in on Changing, name drops a bunch of other great writers while doing so.  End up liking the book. Lit. The FBI kept an eye on Studs Terkel, considering him a “suspected communist”.  Surprised?  Saul Bellow […]

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Bites: Juliet Linderman Interviews Paul Auster, LOOK on Display, Wes Anderson’s Music Choices, and more

Juliet Linderman, managing editor of The Greenpoint Gazette and featured reader at last month’s Vol. 1 Storytelling anniversary party, has lovingly and skillfully interviewed Paul Auster for The Rumpus. It is “lovingly” done in the sense that she clearly holds the novelist to eminent, celebratory respect, and “skillful” in that she just did it really fucking well. And Auster upholds it with his writerly charm, eclipsing the recent unpleasing flavor left atop my literary taste buds by Cormac McCarthy.

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Bites: Chicago reflects, James Ellroy, new Eastwick, Twilight soundtrack, and more

  The Guardian looks at literary Chicago, in it’s more “reflective period” in the wake of the Granta issue that focuses on the Windy City. Lit. To answer your question Gawker: no, we don’t need another Eastwick. Mental Floss has Kurt Vonnegut reading Breakfast of Champions three years before it’s released. (via 92Y) Minneapolis Star Review (via Largehearted Boy) talks to James Ellroy. And over at The Cult, they talk to Mr. Ellroy also. I guess because I’m a blogger, […]

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Bites: Twilight, The Beets, Leonard Michaels, and asking what really matters anymore?

Hipster Runoff “tries to understand Twilight, without actually reading it.” And in doing so, writes just about the only thing on the movie/book that I’ve ever cared enough to read about. Vol. 1 Story Series reader, and contributor to the site, Tobias Carroll went to go see The Beets, Golden Triangle, and Thee Oh Sees (maybe the best lineup of the summer), and this is what he thought. Tablet discusses the essays of the late Leonard Michaels Carrie Brownstein asks […]

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