If you’ve ever wondered what your favorite literary characters might be listening to while they save the world/contemplate existence/get into trouble, or hallucinated a soundtrack to go along with your favorite novels, well, us too. But wonder no more! Here, we sneak a look at the hypothetical iPods of some of literature’s most interesting characters. What would be on the personal playlists of Holden Caulfield or Elizabeth Bennett, Huck Finn or Harry Potter, Tintin or Humbert Humbert? Something revealing, we bet. Or at least something danceable. Read on for a cozy reading soundtrack, character study, or yet another way to emulate your favorite literary hero. This week: Clay, the apathetic protagonist of Bret Easton Ellis’ first novel, Less Than Zero.
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[Editor's note: While your Flavorwire editors take a much-needed holiday break, we're revisiting some of our most popular features of the year. This post was originally published May 18, 2011.] Jezebel-writer Anna North’s debut novel, America Pacifica, is out today. The story centers around an impoverished teenage girl who is struggling to survive on an increasingly toxic island in the Pacific Ocean after a future Ice Age sets in and freezes the mainland. Though the writing can be a little clunky — especially with respect to class issues — North provides good lens into the many ways an aggrieved soul can turn against the world, and how difficult it is to get back our dignity once we’ve lost it. With this in mind, we decided to run a post on books that expose the darker side of humanity — a roundup of the most disturbing novels and short stories through time, if you will.
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If you’ve ever wondered what your favorite literary characters might be listening to while they save the world/contemplate existence/get into trouble, or hallucinated a soundtrack to go along with your favorite novels, well, us too. But wonder no more! Here, we sneak a look at the hypothetical iPods of some of literature’s most interesting characters. What would be on the personal playlists of Holden Caulfield or Elizabeth Bennett, Huck Finn or Harry Potter, Tintin or Humbert Humbert? Something revealing, we bet. Or at least something danceable. Read on for a cozy reading soundtrack, character study, or yet another way to emulate your favorite literary hero. This week: American Psycho‘s über-fit antihero, Patrick Bateman.
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Today at Flavorpill, we met the incredibly adorable real life versions of Timon and Pumbaa from The Lion King. We found it hard to believe that Method Man’s latest song is actually a commercial for Sour Patch Kids. We were glad to see that Bret Easton Ellis is still in rare form these days. We decided that we might keep tuning in to New Girl if it means seeing guest star Lizzy Caplan. We met 50 of the most powerful women in the New York art world. We refused to imagine Hung star Thomas Jane as Don Draper. We learned some interesting facts about Jonathan Franzen — like he was obsessed with Married … with Children back in the ’90s. We watched Rihanna take her pants off in a new spot for Armani. We came across 14 more wonderful words with no English equivalent. And finally, we wished that Ben & Jerry’s would consider making “I Just Blue Myself” — an Arrested Development-inspired creation dreamed up by Jon DeFreest — its next new flavor. We’d buy some for the packaging alone!
Now that it’s September, many of you are probably heading off to school — whether for the first time or the fourth — and even if you’re past school-age, the season does things to your heads, filling them with number 2 pencils and three hole punches and dreams of Philosophy textbooks. Or, at least, that’s all we can think about. College is an inspirational time, particularly for novelists: there is an entire genre based on the campus novel, including books about professors, students, and anyone else who spends a serious amount of time on the hallowed university grounds. In honor of the new school year, we’ve put together a list of great novels set at real-life colleges, whether explicitly stated or thinly veiled in their fictional forms. If you’re starting school this fall, you’d do well to check out what other people think of your new home and what you might expect from your next few years there, and if you’ve already finished, well, everyone likes to read about their alma mater, hopefully shouting out, ‘that’s not how it was!’ and ‘look, that’s me!’ in equal measure. Click through to see our list, and let us know if we’ve missed any of your favorite college novels in the comments.
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Macy Halford recently wrote in the New Yorker‘s Book Bench that she happened upon the “hipster lit” section of Bookhampton while browsing in its Sag Harbor location. The shelves are loaded with the usual suspects: Bolaño, Hornby, and Rimbaud. In the comments section, a rep from Bookhampton gushes, “Bukowski and McSweeney’ [sic] as well as the ultimate female hipster Jennifer Egan (Visit from Goon Squad) and Patti Smith jumped off the shelves this morning… We just put them back!”
Sixty-three years after Anatole Broyard published “A Portrait of the Hipster” in Partisan Review, we are still arguing about what constitutes a hipster. Instead of another essay on the topic, we thought choose a different tack and encourage an alternate list for those Hamptons residents and fair-weather visitors who are sick and tired of their bookstores being invaded by scowling tight-jeaned youths and adults wearing plaid shirts. We came up with a list of novels with acceptable characters for the lily-white denizens of the land where people use “summer” as a verb and argue about ancestors who were on the Mayflower or about who is from “new” money. (South- and East Hampton, we’re looking at you.) What are your suggestions for a Yuppie Lit genre, dear readers?
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Today marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of J.D. Salinger’s much-beloved novel, The Catcher in the Rye. The book has been much argued over in the years since its publication, but no one can deny that it has influenced countless artists, writers and troubled teenagers and had a lasting impact on American culture. Holden is in many ways the original angsty American teen, sex-obsessed and confused, and as a tribute to the occasion of his 60th (or should we say, 77th?) year, we’ve collected a few of our favorite Holden variations, incarnations and iterations here. Click through to see our list of troubled teens, social dropouts, misguided misanthropes and other heirs to our dear Holden Caulfield, and let us know how the man, the myth, the legend has affected your own inner life in the comments. But, of course, don’t be phony.
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A while back we did a post on literary love letters to NYC, but we knew at some point we should honor the entertainment capital of the world, so today is our offering for Los Angeles. It’s a tough town, as the authors below know all too well, and it can be a very dark place sometimes. But as long as people keep dreaming of their name in lights, LA will remain as the city to go to become a star. So here’s to all the film buffs, rock stars, and waiters waiting for a lucky break — keep toughing it out, and enjoy the scenery in the meantime. All hail Tinseltown, in all its troubled, frightening glory.
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After our recent roundup of 25 great parties on film, it occurred to us that movies aren’t the only medium to have depicted fantastic fêtes. So, to help you gear up for a celebratory July 4th weekend, we reached out to Flavorpill staff and readers alike to get their nominations for liteature’s best bash. With their help, we’ve come up with a list of ten great gatherings we would love to have attended. Keep the party going by adding your favorites in the comments.
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We hoped that when we listed our picks for the harshest author-on-author insults in history, you readers would have some of your own favorite barbs and witticisms to suggest. And goodness, you didn’t disappoint! Accordingly, and so as to continue the guilty pleasure of literary insult-mania, we’ve compiled a follow-up list of some of the best suggestions from the group. Note: many of you yearned for Harlan Ellison, but though he certainly has many deliciously to-the-point quotes to his name, we couldn’t seem to think of a choice example where he was directly insulting another author, so any Ellison fans out there with a direct quote, be sure to let us know. Click through for twenty more choice author-on-author insults, as beloved and nominated by our readers!
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