[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.

Read More »

Today at Flavorpill, we listened to “Wild Man,” a song off of Kate Bush’s first studio album in six years. We learned the back stories behind some of the worst album covers in music history. We laughed out loud while reading the Guardian’s roundup of Woody Allen’s best jokes. We wanted to own a set of these Arrested Development tarot cards. We couldn’t look away from these early 3D photos — and we weren’t even wearing the proper glasses. We were impressed by Supertype!, a new collection of comic-book mastheads. We decided that now that the Harry Ransom Center is home to both the David Foster Wallace and J. M. Coetzee archives, we definitely need to take a literary road trip to Austin in the near future. We wondered if marijuana-shaped candy is the new candy cigarettes. We looked at what it takes to make an Apple store. We were surprised by how juicy the love letters between Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz could be. We found this piece on the connection between JD Salinger’s Nine Stories and the character of Harry Potter absolutely fascinating. And finally, we were pretty sure that this “Ultimate Nerd Guide To New York City” will come in handy for most of the fanboys who are in town for New York Comic Con this week.

The third in his series of fictionalized memoirs, J.M. Coetzee’s Summertime questions the author’s own relevance as a human being.

In the process of understanding why readers care about who he is, Coetzee tries to show himself as an awkward, un-sexualized man who is no more worthy of public curiosity than anyone else. Featuring a fictional interviewer, out-of-frame notes, and a series of less-than-flattering third-party accounts, Summertime is a deeply sardonic but ultimately entrancing self-portrait of the Nobel laureate.

Read More »

1. Pitchfork reviews the Beatles reissues. A Hard Day’s Night scores a 9.7, but With the Beatles doesn’t fare so well — an 8.8. [via Pitchfork]
2. Charles Burnett will direct a feature-length documentary about Barack Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. [via THR]
3. The shortlist for this year’s Man Booker Prize includes previous winners A.S. Byatt and J.M. Coetzee, and big sellers Sarah Waters and Hilary Mantel. [via Publishers Weekly]
4. Theater critic John Heilpern has left the New York Observer after 17 years, stating, “I don’t want to be too negative about the 12-year-old owner, Jared Kushner, but as my ma and pa from Manchester, England, used to say, ‘That boy couldn’t run a chip shop.’” [via NYP]
5. Nick Cave has released a soundtrack for his new novel The Death Of Bunny Munro that is reportedly a mix of “a film soundtrack, a radio play, and an hallucination.” [via NME]

Crichton dies at 66: Bestselling giant MICHAEL CRICHTON — who began writing to pay off his bills at Harvard Medical School — died Tuesday at the age of 66. After having churned out science-fiction thrillers like SPHERE and ANDROMEDA STRAIN, not to mention all the JURASSIC PARK books, he leaves quite a legacy. [NYT]

Kundera has really important friends: Eleven internationally renowned writers have come to the defense of Czech author MILAN KUNDERA, who on Monday was accused of being a police informer under communist rule. Kundera’s publisher claims that his reputation is being threatened by the accusations, and writers such as SALMAN RUSHDIE, J.M. COETZEE and PHILIP ROTH came to the Czech writer’s defense. [AFP]

Stop and smell the graveyards: The BLACK PHOENIX ALCHEMY LAB has expanded their repertoire into more literary territory. The laboratory is adapting scents from NEIL GAIMAN’s THE GRAVEYARD BOOK and making them into perfumes. “Eau de Ghoul” joins the ranks of the lab’s scents, alongside classics like an Oscar Wilde and Marquis de Sade scents. We’ve always wondered what sadomasochism smells like. [MTV]

The Beats go on: The novel that kick-started the Beat Generation is now going to be published. AND THE HIPPOS WERE BOILED IN THE TANKS — a collaboration by JACK KEROUAC and WILLIAM S BURROUGHS — was written 13 years before Kerouac’s ON THE ROAD and tells a story of friendship, gay obsession and murder. [The Independent]

Dickinson’s trees threatened: An Amherst, Mass. proposal to cut down nearly 200 hemlock trees near EMILY DICKINSON’s house has sparked a heated debate among residents. After her death in 1886, the trees were left unkempt and local museum directors would like to replace them with a more appropriate hedge. Many, however, claim that the trees outside the poet’s home are what inspired her to write. [Boston Globe]

We don’t remember the ballpark scene in Pride and Prejudice: Thanks to JANE AUSTEN, the Brits are trying to claim baseball. [Telegraph]

- Iza Wojciechowska