Rejoice, habitual imbibers of the magic herb. This year, the smoke-filled 4/20 falls on a Saturday, so you can celebrate the holiday unencumbered by the work day. If you’d like to supplement today’s festivities with a little bit of quality reading but can’t bear the obvious drug-addled narratives or trippy lit, we’ve got you covered with a list of highbrow books for smarty-pants… Read More
Thomas Pynchon
Your Favorite Authors’ Favorite Musicians
Here at Flavorwire of late, we’ve been looking at what some of our favorite creative types have appreciated in the work of their peers — our favorite actors’ favorite actors, etc. We do like a bit of genre cross-pollination, though, so we thought we’d extend the remit of the idea across genre lines, starting with some of our favorite authors discussing the work of the musicians who inspire, excite, or just generally impress… Read More
Rare Footage of Famous Authors
Savoring a book for weeks, months, and sometimes years inspires a natural curiosity about the person behind the words. Several scribes have reached cult celebrity status with voracious audiences, but others remain an enigma — their voices and image seldom captured, often due to lapses in technological advancement. After spotting a rare video featuring Nineteen Eighty-Four author George Orwell on Open Culture, we realized how many writers have evaded their close-up — by choice and by fate. Watch the rare footage of famous authors that we found after the break. The videos offer an intimate glimpse of literature’s most amazing minds. … Read More
Wonderfully Hectic Redesigns of Thomas Pynchon’s Backlist by Yuko Kondo
Okay, we admit it — we’ve been on a little bit of of Pynchon cover kick recently, what with our roundup of Gravity’s Rainbow covers to celebrate the novel’s 40th anniversary and all. But when we spotted the recent Vintage redesign of Pynchon’s backlist over at A Piece of Monologue, we just couldn’t resist. The crazy, pop culture-infused covers were created by London illustrator Yuko Kondo, who explains that his given task was “to choose random words from inside each novel and to draw these words.” And boy, has he drawn a lot of words. After the jump, check out six Pynchon novels as reimagined by Kondo, and let us know what you think in the comments. … Read More
40 Years of Covering Thomas Pynchon’s ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’
This week marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of Thomas Pynchon’s legendary postmodern tome Gravity’s Rainbow, a fact made doubly interesting (at least to us) in light of the recent details about the reclusive author’s forthcoming novel. Haven’t read his backlist? Now’s the time. In case you need a little inspiration, or just want to celebrate the book’s anniversary with us, click through to peek at our gallery of Gravity’s Rainbow cover art from home and abroad, from the very first edition to last year’s redesigns. … Read More
Great Literary Characters Inspired by Real Famous People
This week will see the release of a book we’re pretty excited about: Carlene Bauer’s Frances and Bernard, a novel inspired by the relationship between Flannery O’Connor and Robert Lowell. After the jump, we’ve put together a list of some other great novels with characters inspired by real life people that have caught the cultural consciousness — excepting works that are primarily autobiographical, and focusing on books that are not just historical fiction, but true adaptations (names are changed!) of people and events. Read through our list after the jump, and if we missed your favorite in this category, be sure to add it on in the comments. … Read More
The All-Time Weirdest Guest Appearances on ‘The Simpsons’
So if you haven’t heard, Tom Waits was on The Simpsons last night, voicing “a gravelly voiced paranoiac” prepper and joining the long list of illustrious and not-so-illustrious guest stars who’ve graced the show since it started screening way back in 1989. His appearance got us thinking about some of the more unlikely guest stars and/or performances the show has seen over the years — and so we’ve amused ourselves after the jump selecting some of our favorites, from Johnny Cash playing a psychedelic coyote to Thomas Pynchon breaking a 40-year TV silence. Did we miss any of your favorites? Go ahead and let us know. (And advance apologies for the quality of a couple of the clips — Simpsons videos are like hen’s teeth on YouTube.) … Read More
New York’s 100 Most Important Living Writers
Philip Roth’s recently announced retirement got us thinking about the state of New York City’s literary landscape. As a result, we’ve compiled a list of the city’s 100 most important… Read More
10 Notorious Literary Slogs That Are Worth the Effort
There has been much discussion over the years as to whether Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is The Great American Novel, simply A Great American Novel, or is just a lengthy collection of complaints about whales (not that many people admit to thinking the latter). But if you’ve been meaning to read it for years and have never quite gotten up the nerve (or the time), an awesome marathon reading begins tonight at WORD in Greenpoint, which also happens to be one of our very favorite bookstores. To celebrate the event, we’ve put together a list of notorious literary slogs — long, difficult, and/or complicated enough to scare even the strongest reader — that are definitely worth the effort. Read our list after the jump, and add on your own favorites in the comments! … Read More
Graphic Artworks Inspired by 20th Century American Authors
As any regular Flavorpill reader knows, we love books over here, and we’re also suckers for graphic art. So it shouldn’t surprise you that we got pretty excited this morning when Largehearted Boy pointed us to a great gallery of artwork inspired by 20th century American authors over at Super Precious. The highly graphic, colorful artworks look like some of the coolest posters or t-shirt designs you’ve ever seen, celebrating authors like J.D. Salinger, Charles Bukowski, and Kurt Vonnegut, among other favorites. Click through to see a few of our favorites from the gallery, and then be sure to head over to Super Precious to see the entire set, and to buy prints of any that strike your fancy. … Read More
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