4 all-night chemists
4. Big-ass Paris Review Jonathan Lethem interview.
I was one of those creepy dropouts who moves into his girlfriend’s dorm room. She stole meals from the dining hall in a Tupperware container hidden in a hollowed-out textbook, and I sat in her room and wrote an unpublishably bad first novel.
14. Angelina Jolie’s favorite book is Vlad the Impaler: In Search of the Real Dracula. If you were wondering.
77.
2. The Australian on Light Boxes by Shane Jones.
R.I.P. Tony Judt
The historian and critic Tony Judt died this weekend from complications related to Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS). He was 62. From the obituary in the Times.
An impassioned left-wing Zionist as a teenager, he shed his faith in agrarian socialism and Marxism early on and became, as he put it, a “universalist social democrat” with a deep suspicion of left-wing ideologues, identity politics and the emerging role of the United States as the world’s sole superpower.
[…]
“Today I’m regarded outside New York University as a looney-tunes leftie self-hating Jewish communist; inside the university I’m regarded as a typical old-fashioned white male liberal elitist,” he told The Guardian of London in January 2010. “I like that. I’m on the edge of both, it makes me feel comfortable.”
There’s a wealth of links on the obit page to articles by and about Judt. I recommend “Israel without Cliches” (6/9/10). Also, here are excerpts from Judt’s most recent book, Ill Fares the Land at the NYRB and at the Times. Here’s all of Judt’s NYRB work (not sure how much is accessible without a subscription). Also check out “Bush’s Useful Idiots” from the LRB. And here’s an interview with Marc Tracy at Tablet, and another on Fresh Air about living with ALS.
Shipley, Gary J. Theoretical Animals. (2010)
Was I able to understand this book? – No.
Did I think it was an enriching reading experience? – Yes, absolutely. It’s beautiful. I want to roll around in it. I want to swing from its branches.
— from David F. Hoenigman’s review in 3AM Magazine
Available now from BlazeVox
The Word Made Flesh Mobilizes on Multiple Fronts
Just about one year to the day (7/24/09) from when the idea was launched from this very blog, The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide is an imminent reality. The book–a full-color photo-anthology co-edited by Eva Talmadge and yours truly–will hit stores in October. You’ll be hearing plenty more about it then (we hope), but in the meantime I wanted to let folks know that we now have a website up and running at tattoolit.com. The site–which is primarily a tumblr–updates daily with re-blogs of literary tattoos from around the web that we find, literary quotations that seem like they might be worth writing on your body forever, and in the future will also have some previews/excerpts from the book itself, a book trailer, and whatever else we think of. You can also follow TattooLit on Twitter (the Twitterfeed streams to the website, but please don’t let this stop you from following it). Also^2, there’s the Facebook page. Also^3, even though the book is finished, we’d be glad to post a picture of your literary tattoo on any and all of the above-mentioned, so if you have one or are getting one, please feel free & encouraged to send them our way.
We Know What We Are by Mary Hamilton
This gorgeous book is now available for pre-order by Rose Metal Press.
In We Know What We Are, worlds are made, torn apart, drowned. The stories go small: a girl ties a ribbon on a present. The stories go big: a war is raged against the evening sky. The characters in these thirteen short short fictions find themselves in less-than-desirable circumstances. They know their plights. They acknowledge their situations. They give in. They overcome. They daydream a world where everything will be all right.
“The concise stories in this dynamic collection are bursting with moments of stark urgency and unexpected humor, with imagery that moves seamlessly from the bizarre to the oddly familiar, and situations that shift from the ludicrous to the undeniably sad.
Mary Hamilton’s fiction is dream-like, precise, fresh, unexpected, cumulative, delightful, and at times, incantatory. She is a tenacious writer, working each word, each sentence, each image, the way a carver works the stone. It is fun, and fascinating, to see where she goes next.”
—Dinty W. Moore, author of Between Panic and Desire
Coming Attractions
1. I love when authors I love leak a little information about what they’re working on, so I was basically salivating as I read this interview with Jeffrey Eugenides at FSG’s Work in Progress blog. Anyone else excited about this? I don’t think I have ever met anyone who doesn’t like Eugenides and surely his likability pisses someone here off.
2. Ever since I finished the Vicarious MFA series here, I have been trying to think of a new series and I finally did. It’s called 10 sentences and it’s something like an interview, something like a game, but not exactly either. The first one will be with John Jodzio & you can expect it Monday or Tuesday.
A Friday Poem?
what is it called
what is it called when a doe gives birth to her litter
what is it called when you like pain
what is it called when the moon is closest to earth in its orbit
what is it called when a snake sheds its skin
what is it called when a dog gives birth
what is it called when you cant sleep
what is it called when a sea bird lands on a channel marker
what is it called when a solid changes directly into a gas
what is it called when you can’t smell
what is it called when you cant hear
More after the cut. READ MORE >
Adam Robinson—
OK, if no one else is going to say it, I will:
Blake’s book.
4/5/11. I can’t think of a way to say how much I’m looking forward to this. I sincerely hope to hear a lot about it over the coming 9 months.
20
