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: the confused narrator of Jeffrey Eugenides’ family epic, Cal Stephanides.

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Martin Scorsese’s excellent new documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World premieres tonight at the New York Film Festival; it will then run on HBO, in two parts, on Wednesday and Thursday night. Here are a few not-so-brief thoughts on how and why Scorsese has used rock music throughout his career.

Music moved me. It literally makes us move a certain way. It makes certain things happen. It’s equivalent to dancing, I guess. You know, you behaved a certain way. Some of the boys were able to swagger. Others pulled back. But the music scored our lives. I was taking it all in, pulling it together.

- Martin Scorsese, Conversations with Scorsese (2011)

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How do you get people to pay attention to a conventional radio station in these days of Spotify and Pandora and Sirius and endless other mobile music services and gadgets? Well, a good ad campaign never hurt. We’re loving this new series of photos publicizing French rock station Ouï FM’s expansion to the provinces, which places classic album covers in uncannily appropriate settings in the rural towns it now serves. The Who Sings My Generation, with its clock tower cover, is perched atop a church in Cherbourg; Roxy Music’s Siren fits perfectly amid the rocky cliffs of Brest. What better way to remind us of how deeply rooted music is in our daily lives? Check out a few of our favorite images from the campaign after the jump, then visit Fubiz to see the rest.

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We hear so much salacious gossip about feuds between musicians that this letter, spotted by Letters of Note, is a welcome antidote to all the negativity. Pete Townshend wrote his missive of praise for The Kinks after they supported The Who in Chicago, on Halloween 1969. Apparently, Ray Davies and co. were opening for a band that used to open for them because they’d been banned from touring the US back “over some Union hassle or Tax hassle” that ultimately hurt their fame stateside. (Chicagoist explains that Townshend is referring to a 1964 incident in which Davies clocked a musician’s union rep; our research shows that the fight actually happened in ’65.) Among other compliments, the Who guitarist praised The Kinks’ then-new album, Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), writing, “I never thought they could ever best Village Green for sheer Kinksness but they appear to have done it.” Read the entire, adoring letter — typewritten on wonderfully kitschy Holiday Inn stationery — after the jump.

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1. In case you’re curious as to what happens in Oprah’s second and third final shows, The Hollywood Reporter was part of the 20,000-person, celebrity-filled crowd at yesterday’s four-hour taping, and has a detailed record of the entire thing (which includes Aretha Franklin performing “Amazing Grace”!). The episodes will air on May 23rd and 24th.

2. Danish director Lars von Trier loves saying crazy things to journalists, especially when he’s at Cannes. Lucky for us, Vulture has rounded up the 10 most controversial things he said at the Melancholia press conference, which includes some rambling about being a Nazi and his sympathies for Hitler.

3. The Austin City Limits music festival has announced its 2011 lineup, and it includes headliners Stevie Wonder, Arcade Fire, Coldplay, and Kanye West. [via Pop Candy]

4. The Who’s Pete Townshend will release his long-awaited memoir Who He? — which he has been working on for 15 years now — in the fall of 2012. Regarding a 2003 child pornography incident, which was part of his “background research,” he now says: “I believe I was sexually abused between the age of five and six and a half when in the care of my maternal grandmother who was mentally ill at the time. Some of the things I have seen on the internet have informed my book.” [via NME]

5. So this bodes well: Michelle Williams will play Glinda the Good Witch in Sam Raimi’s Wizard of Oz prequel, Oz, the Great and Powerful. She joins a cast that already includes James Franco (The Wizard), Rachel Weisz (the Wicked Witch of the East), and Mila Kunis (The Wicked Witch of the West). [via Moveline]

Bonus link: Download Bon Iver’s 10 Best Cover Songs

Former LA Times pop critic Ann Powers came storming out of the gate yesterday with the first post for her new gig at NPR Music. Titled “It’s the Summer of Selling Out, and It Feels Fine,” her piece uses last weekend’s Coachella festival and the current crop of American Idol frontrunners to argue that 2011 is shaping up to be a good year “for all kinds of fans who like their music to feel free while it still aims for the center of the culture’s attention.” Part of Powers’s point is that “selling out” and making great music don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

Although we have immense respect for the underground, we think Powers makes an important point. The tale of a talented but naïve band signing their lives away to a major label and then collapsing under the pressure to sell product is a common narrative, but it’s also far from the only outcome. After the jump, we list ten bands that ditched the indies for the majors, licensed their music to commercials, and went pop — and were better off for it, artistically.

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To many, collage is an under-appreciated art form – perhaps merely because often it’s too accessible to be considered Capital-A Art. After all, every semi-creative teenage girl’s walls will inevitably become a massive collage, and even in our age of recycling and DIY, there is often an establishment resistance to art that is built out of the art of others. There’s also a movement for exactly that idea, of course. Regardless, we love us some collage, and since music is ultimately nothing but a very grand tonal collage anyway (Girl Talk aside), we think album covers are the perfect vehicle for this particular form. These album covers, created from found paper, disparate ideas, reassembled photographs and pieced-together letters, manage to be strange, lovely, and completely apt all at once. Click through for 15 of our favorite collaged album covers, and let us know your own favorites in the comments!

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Since playing music is so much about being on the road, and since rock ‘n’ roll is so much about being reckless and young and fast, it’s no wonder that so many rock icons have been photographed and immortalized with their cars. Click through to see a roundup of 10 of our favorite photographs of famous musicians mugging alongside their rides.

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Over the weekend, three X-rays of Marilyn Monroe’s chest were sold for a grand total of $45,000 at a movie memorabilia auction in Las Vegas. The X-rays were originally taken from a hospital visit in 1954, when Monroe was 28. Experts estimated the X-rays would fetch $3,000, but it turns out the price of owning objects that have some sort of relationship to famous people, no matter how tenuous, is worth a whole lot more.

To celebrate celebrities — because that’s what they’re for, aren’t they? — we decided to make a list of cherished memorabilia that people were willing to pay a hefty fee to possess. The list includes a helmet, wig, and pair of glasses.

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As big fans of The Who, we are happy to report that their songs still packed an amazing punch at last night’s benefit concert at Carnegie Hall. To put this into perspective, it has been nearly four decades since their first hit single, “I Can’t Explain” — performed last night by The Postelles, who absolutely nailed it. From Roger Daltrey’s frenzied stage antics to the falsetto backup vocals, it felt like what we imagine a Who concert was like in the ’60s.

In fact, most of the night felt like an incredible time warp, beginning with the Overture from Tommy performed by the fresh faced kids of the Music Unites Youth Choir and led by bandleader extraordinaire Steven Bernstein while playing his slide trumpet like an electric guitar.

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