Patrick Kingsley recently wrote in The Guardian about “poisonous literary feuds” and the peacemakers who could broker a truce. We ran a post on the subject last year, but thought we would do an international list of troublemakers this time around. We’d also like to honor the man who racked up the most hours feuding with his literary colleagues: Norman Mailer. Writers today generally aren’t as venomous toward each other (although maybe Colson Whitehead would disagree after his salivary encounter with Richard Ford). We have to agree with Mailer’s proclamation on The Dick Cavett Show: “I’m going to be the champ until one of you knocks me off.”
Read More »
It’s official: we’ve found our new favorite blog. Bill Ryan, a New York based book lover, is collecting insults from his literary heroes. It all started around six years ago at a book signing at the excellent BookCourt, when on a whim, Ryan asked Maggie Pouncey to inscribe his book with an insult instead of a dedication. Now, in his wonderfully entertaining blog, Insulted By Authors, Ryan documents his adventures getting insulted by – or not getting insulted by, as the case may be – his favorite authors, and displays the creatively rude missives for our enjoyment. Click through for some of our favorite insults from Ryan’s collection, but be warned – these are word people, and some of their language is quite colorful. Perhaps it is redundant to say, but the faint of heart should not read Amy Sedaris’s contribution.
Read More »
In the first big David Foster Wallace documentary since his suicide, the BBC’s Professor Geoff Ward discusses the author’s childhood, legacy, preoccupations and battles with the gentleness of a true fan but the exactitude of a scholar. On the radio missive, which first aired on the BBC on February 6th, Ward interviews Wallace’s contemporaries (Rick Moody and Mark Costello, who was also Wallace’s college roommate), Don DeLillo, Michael Pietsch, editor of Infinite Jest, Wallace’s agent, Bonnie Nadell and his sister, Amy Wallace. He also mines archives of interviews with DFW — some of the most wonderful are with Wallace discussing irony — and accents his ruminations and conversations with passages from Infinite Jest as well as the forthcoming The Pale King.
If you’re a reader, a writer or even just a member of the television saturation generation, it’s worth a listen, and if you’re a fan of Wallace, the program may tug at your heartstrings, suggesting what might have been, but celebrating the man as he was. As Don DeLillo tells Ward, “I can’t think of anyone quite like him, at all… Wallace stands alone.” Click through to hear the documentary in its entirety.
Read More »
It’s not enough to just be awesome at one thing anymore. More and more artists are multitasking, and we’re seeing a particular amount of crossover between the somewhat unlikely genres of music and literature. But wait — aren’t musicians supposed to be outgoing egomaniacs and aren’t writers supposed to be tweedy shut-ins? Well, the writer/musician isn’t exactly a new trend — remember Tarantula, Dylan’s stream-of-consciousness book of prose-poetry? And don’t forget that Leonard Cohen was actually a writer first. So maybe there’s something to this whole writer turned rock star thing. Here are some multitaskers who make us feel bad about ourselves when we lie around the house all Sunday.
Read More »
What exactly is a rock-n-roll novel? It isn’t necessarily a novel about musicians, or a novel for which rock music provides a backdrop — though there have been novels that have fallen into each of these categories. Nor is it necessarily a book by a rock musician: the narrator of Joe Pernice’s recent It Feels So Good When I Stop
may play music, but its role in the novel is ultimately less about his creative endeavors and more about music’s parallels to his romantic life. Read More »
Books: Remember when Dale Pecked “kneecapped” Rick Moody? [The Southeast Review via BookNinja]
Dance/Opera: Remember when we had a president who thought dance was for sissies? [LAT]
Design: Remember the last time a bunch of big buildings got chopped because of money woes? [NYT]
Film: Remember when Will Ferrell was in a *highly-anticipated cop comedy? [EW]
Music: Remember The Format? [waywardlife's posterous]
Television: Remember when Paris Hilton had the cultural clout to pull off something like this off? [TV Squad]
Theatre: Remember when the dark side of the Force stayed far, far away from Broadway? [NY Mag]
Visual Arts: Remember when people used to go to museums — not casinos — to check out art? [MAN]
Web: Remember when everyone you knew was on AOL? [Slate]
* If you said yes to this one, you were lying to yourself. It hasn’t happened yet. For shame.
