Weekend Bites: A Nobel Laureates Commute, Blake Butler & NY Tyrant on Franzen, Márquez Used and More

At The New York Times:  Peruvian Nobel laureate, Mario Vargas Llosa, discusses teaching Borges at an Ivy, investing his money, and the killer commute from Jersey to Manhattan: ““It’s very nice. But not if you take the train at 5 or 6 o’clock. It can be a Kafkaesque commute.” At Vice:  Blake Butler and NY Tyrant take HTML GIANT’S “Mean Week” on the road, and trash Jonathan Franzen over at Vice. Hilarity ensues. At Boing Boing: Star Trak characters reading […]

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Link: The Daily Beast Breaks Down Nobel Winner Mario Vargas Llosa

“Though the British betting firm Ladbrokes put Vargas Llosa’s odds this year at a relatively slim 25-1, he’s been talked about as Nobel material for years (even decades at this point), and it’s easy to see why. He has the combination of sterling literary credibility and political activism—that bid for Peru’s presidency certainly helped—that the Nobel committee can’t seem to resist.” Read More

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Monday Bites: literary duels, giant guinea pigs, poets being selfish, pynchon reviews, daria, david cronenberg picks delillo’s worst book

Good morning! Did you know that Dostoevsky once challenged Turgenev to a duel? I ask, with swords?? Do famous writers still duel? Norman Mailer probably did. And Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel Garcia Marquez sort of managed, although it was more of a one-punch deal. On literary feuds. Giant guinea pigs trump boy wizards, apparently. The Daily Beast interviews Jeffrey Eugenides, who was fired from his desk job at the Academy of American Poets for writing parts of The Virgin […]

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