James Yeh interviews Diane Williams at The Faster Times.

At The Rumpus, Elissa Bassist wonders, have I earned these cliches?

In a belated look at the NYTBR, the great Harold Bloom reviews a book about the history of anti-Semitism in English literature, Adam Kirsch looks at two books about Heidegger, and Rebecca  Newberger Goldstein writes a satire on Theory, in the style of Borges.

io9 rounds up 35 titles for “The Essential Posthuman Science Fiction Reading List.”

The Nation has a new website! Learn about what’s different here, and about their decision to open source here. Kudos and congrats, guys!

Speaking of new websites, n+1 has one, too. The present feature is new fiction by Dy Tran “about” donuts.

A new issue of the Home Video Review of Books!

And last but absolutely not least, the new issue of Propeller features an interview with Kevin Sampsell, one with yours truly, a review of the latest Nicholson Baker, and a whole bunch of other treats besides. Check it out.

Thou Shalt Read

Last week while I was visiting family in Mississippi, I spent more time in church than I have in the past two years. This reminded me that from the age of 4 and 14, I spent roughly 490 Sundays in church excluding occasional sick days. That’s 1,225 hours when you include Sunday school and “fellowship” time. In addition to regular Sundays there were Wednesday night dinners, youth group meetings, confirmation classes, summer Bible school, youth choir practice, choir tours and weekend retreats. I’m estimating that about 3,500-4,000 hours. Yikes!

But what effect does all this Jesus have on one’s writing? I can’t speak for everyone who has had this kind of upbringing, but for me, church-going led me directly into writing. Prayer led to journaling; journaling led to disgraceful poetry; disgraceful poetry led to disgraceful fiction, then to essays and memoir and more fiction. But church also instilled a reverence for narrative and the inclination to analyze and obsess over stories and books (first books in the bible, of course, but then others.)

Just in time for Christmas, N+1 posted this video of their panel discussion titled Evangelicalism and the Contemporary Intellectual and it’s pretty interesting, though the title is slightly misleading. (It’s not just about Evangelicalism, which is a very particular corner of Protestantism, but about growing up in the church in general.) READ MORE >

Hipster Tilley by Johnny Zito

I’m tired of hipsters saying they hate hipsters. Every time I read some rant on how hipsters suck I realize I’m reading it in a journal or website written by and for hipsters. Self-hating narcissistic hipsters somehow think they are immune to the vague and broad fallacies of hipsterdom. What deepens this ingrown pathology and paranoia is that self-denying hipsters often subconsciously enjoy being called hipsters, because in some weird way it’s a compliment. This is not a defense of hipsterdom, but an afriendly suggestion that maybe we’re all in the same goddamn pond.

Hipsterdom’s got something do to with an impenetrable irony which results in shallowness, affectedness, smugness, etc. — but aren’t those just judgment calls, like things people have been calling other people forever? Jane Austen and Evelyn Waugh’s been calling out people like that for ages. Hipsterdom may be a new word, but pettiness is timeless.

READ MORE >

Britney Spears’ “… Baby One More Time” reached #1 on the charts on January 30, 1999 – ten years ago this week. [NOTE: NOW A WEEK AGO; OH WELL  -JT] After her came the deluge: the end of the record industry as we know it, yes, but also the end of America as it used to conceive of itself. Five writers mark the decennial of this debatably historic occasion.

I’m not sure if anyone’s irony-sensors have triggered alarm bells already, but if they are, you should manually disable the system and give this thing a fair shot. (Also, when you have a minute, do yourself a favor and look up the definition of the word irony.) Like everything n+1 produces, the Britney Symposium is erudite, funny, and concerned–for better or worse–with an absolutely earnest engagement with the world. 

READ MORE >

Okay, this is complicated: ADD is Attention Deficit Disorder, and the acronym spells ‘add,’ and so, people with ADD are to do two things: 1) read the name of the following journals all the way through by 2) adding the letters following the addition sign. You may ask, ‘what is the point of this shit?’ to which I reply, ‘fuck off, I’m a contributing writer.’

NO [n + O]

I don’t no much about this journal, though they seem somewhat negative. I can imagine their rejection letter: No

NOO [n + OO]

From our very own M. Young and R. Call, this is a beautifully designed journal featuring the hard hitters of online lit today (R. Lopez, T. Lin, B. Butler, K. Spitzer, N. Cicero, C. Smith, et al). The Germanic umlaut is Mike’s way of saying ‘I’m am the fuhrer.’ The black and white logo reminds me of a cow. Noo Moo.

NOON [n + OON]

At 12PM sharp everyday, Diane Williams orders a latte and biscotti and sits down at a café and opens submissions. She has an engraved letter opener which reads “e-mail is for a-hole.” Once, she came across my submission and used it for a napkin. ‘Kiss me,’ my story said, and was ignored.

N + 1 [n + 1 + choad grammar]

There’s something about being really smart and living in NYC that makes people who are either not as smart or not living in NYC feel like shit. Every time I see the photo of the editors in their apartment/office, burdened by the implications of their formidable ideas, I feel obsolete, pathetic, and stupid (I will admit, alot of that is my father’s fault). If you look closely at the clock, you’ll notice it’s 12:30PM, half an hour behind Ms. Williams. She downed the biscotti and is off to zen camp. ‘Kiss me’, I said to those guys, and they said, ‘the comma goes inside the quotation mark.’ Choads!