On Shop Novels, Past and Present

Consider the campus novel. It’s a genre within literary fiction capable of encompassing works as thematically and stylistically diverse as Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, Ishmael Reed’s Japanese by Spring, and Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim. As disparate as these novels are, however, one can find certain structures in common. Though no two colleges or universities are the same, the basic structures of most are similar enough that a hierarchy of characters can be easily established. (The same could be said […]

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Afternoon Bites: Patti Smith & Jessica Hopper, George Pelecanos’s Culture Diary, Miles Klee on “Cotton Eyed Joe,” and More

Jessica Hopper talks with Patti Smith about her new album Banga at The Daily. The awesome Tobi Vail interviews the equally awesome Grass Widow. At Sound of the City, Miles Klee on “Cotton Eyed Joe.” Vulture has the skinny on what George Pelecanos’s week in culture has been like. Ted Sanders is interviewed over at Hobart. Book Riot presents The Loner’s Guide to Book Expo America. Follow Vol. 1 Brooklyn on Twitter, Facebook, Google + and our Tumblr.

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Bites: Howard Zinn, Tobi Vail on George Pelecanos, Shakespeare’s Pad, Alicia Jo Rabins and David Bazan on Faith and Art, and More

Over at The Millions, Jesse Ball reviews a year of reading, and makes us want to go buy the book pictured above. Howard Zinn’s Voices of a People’s History (Seven Stories Press) “collects the works of outsiders, rebels, and disenfranchised Americans“. Over at the Bumpidee Reader, Tobi Vail reviews The Way Home, by George Pelecanos. “We are hoping to find organic debris that will teach us what the great man had for dinner.” Says Richard Kemp, of the Shakespeare Birthplace […]

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