More exciting news for what we consider an under-served demographic — lit geeks who also really love TV: Author Sam Lipsyte, who took us on a walking tour of Astoria when his hilarious book The Ask came out last year, is developing a new show called People City for HBO with Sideways producer Michael London. The “offbeat comedy” will focus on “a 25-year-old man hired by an eccentric New York couple to be their child’s caretaker.” So, we’re imagining that it’s like a male version of The Nanny Diaries, but with Lipsyte’s trademark dark humor mixed with intense outrage sprinkled throughout. Given April’s announcement that the network would be adapting Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad, into a series, and the ongoing success of Bored To Death (which was created by Jonathan Ames), it seems like there’s a real give-New-York-City-authors-their-own-TV-show trend happening at the moment — and it’s one that we wholeheartedly support. Will you be tuning in? [via The A.V. Club]
1. Feminist punk legend Poly Styrene from X-Ray Spex (aka Marianne Elliot Said) has died after a battle with breast cancer. She was only 53. [via NME]
2. Flavorpill favorite Sam Lipsyte has a new short story in this week’s New Yorker. Read it in full here.
3. In other New Yorker-related news, after entering for years, Roger Ebert has finally won the magazine’s weekly cartoon caption contest. Check out his winning entry here.
4. Do not believe the vicious rumor that the last company still making typewriters recently shut down its plant in Mumbai. There are still plenty of other typewriter manufacturers in the world, and that plant actually shuttered way back in 2009. [via Gawker]
5. Interesting news: Marisa Tomei may be the female lead in Aaron Sorkin’s upcoming pilot for HBO, and Olivia Munn is in talks to join the project as well. [via Deadline]
Bonus link: New Yorkers John Belitsky And Dan Wuebben Take Taxi to Los Angeles (Really)
One of our go-to Monday morning reads (seriously, bookmark it) is The Days of Yore, a stellar blog that interviews artists of all stripes about the time before they were successful. It is consistently inspiring, thoughtful and flat-out wonderful to read – and whether you’re an aspiring artist, writer, musician or some combination thereof, there will be someone to give you some pithy life advice. When one of our very favorite authors, Jennifer Egan, won the Pulitzer this week for her mind-blowing novel A Visit From The Goon Squad, we were thrilled to see her Days of Yore interview go up soon after, and it got us thinking about all the great life advice from amazing authors just dangling out there in the universe, waiting to be collected. Click through for some curated advice and musings from Jennifer Egan, George Saunders, Gary Shteyngart, Wells Tower, and well, you know, anyone who’s anyone, and if you get inspired, be sure to click over to the whole interview.
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They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but can you judge a country by the kind of covers it puts on its books? We’ve always found the cover changes between US and UK editions of the same books pretty interesting – they must be reflective of our different cultures in some way incomprehensible to us. After all, book jacket designers are trying to capture the attention and imagination of their target populace, so it’s fascinating to see what the experts think will attract a Brit versus what they think might attract an American. Inspired by the annual US vs UK book cover comparison of Rooster contenders over at The Millions, we decided to make a list of our own, comparing the covers of our favorite books from last year — and, just for fun, a few of our favorite books from years past. Click through to see the comparisons and our picks for the winners, and let us know what you think in the comments!
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Today at Flavorpill, we watched a sea lion do downward dog. We read a funny new Sam Lipsyte short story in The New Yorker called “The Dungeon Master.” We experienced 20 years of pop music history in under 3 minutes. We discovered just how much H.G. Wells didn’t like American journalists. We got some solid career advice from Milton Glaser. We decided that our apartments would be so much cleaner if we had this R2D2 vacuum. WE looked at 13 of the strangest sculptures in the world. We met an amorous Florida couple whose antics redefine the term “PDA.” We stumbled upon a slew of new Conan promos. We wished that we could drive like this guy. And finally, we were rather surprised by the results of Gawker’s investigation into which tabloids lie the most. Who knew that Us Weekly was so trustworthy?
* Sam Lipsyte: Leg Warmer Guy
* Truman Capote reading from Breakfast at Tiffany’s at the 92nd Street Y Poetry Center in 1963
* Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes talk about how they met
* A clip from David Foster Wallace‘s Kenyon College Commencement Speech
* John Banville reads from The Infinities
Sam Lipsyte’s new book The Ask
is a riotous, devilish look at a middle-aged slacker trying to pull his life back together. Clearly, we loved it, and while interviewing him, sheepishly (and nerdily) quoted Lolita to describe his prose style: we told him it’s like reading a “lavish epileptic fit.” How else can you describe language that manages to be nasty, hilarious, and tender all at once — and often in exuberant bursts? That’s what we thought.
The novel also transmits a very strong sense of place, so this past weekend, Sam agreed to take us on a walking tour of his old neighborhood in Astoria (he now teaches at Columbia and lives on the Upper West Side), which functions as the setting for much of the book, and the place in which Milo (the aforementioned slacker) lives. Discussed on the way: Hitler-loving Czechs, Mary Karr, awkward sex, Barry Hannah, the hostile takeover of land by the “me’s,” Ben Marcus, epic beer gardens, unironic hipsters, Padgett Powell, ways to make money in the park, Keith Gessen, pickup football, George Saunders, the boring shit, and Deb Olin Unferth, among other things. Hit the pavement after the jump.
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The Millions recently posted the very Shteyngart-y opening passage of Gary Shteyngart’s forthcoming novel, Super Sad True Love Story
.
“Today I’ve made a major decision: I am never going to die. Others will die around me. They will be nullified. Nothing of their personality will remain. The light switch will be turned off.”
It got us thinking about our own favorite beginnings, both recent and classic. Below are some favorites from our bookshelf. Feel free to add your own picks in the comments section.
1. Slumberland
by Paul Beatty
Best commentary on “post-blackness” considering Obama wasn’t even president when the book was written:
“You would think they’d be used to me by now. I mean don’t they know that after fourteen hundred years the charade of blackness is over? That we blacks, the once eternally hip, the people who were as right now as Greenwich Mean Time, are, as of today, as yesterday as stone tools, the velocipede, and the paper straw all rolled into one? The Negro is now officially human. Everyone, even the British, says so.”
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As The Millions noted in its 2010 book preview, the theme for the upcoming year (and beyond) seems to be posthumous publication: Roberto Bolaño, Ralph Ellison, Stieg Larsson, and David Foster Wallace — the dead gang’s all here! (OK, so technically DFW’s The Pale King isn’t meant to come out until 2011, but we couldn’t leave him out.) That said, there’s plenty of good stuff to look forward to from the living as well. After the jump, we reveal the books that we’re most excited about reading in the coming months — and tell you about a few that we’ve already devoured.
Be sure to leave your own suggestions in the comments.
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