Bites: Hemingway’s African Snows, Colson Whitehead on Your Next Novel, The Virtuousness of Swiss Prisons, and more

Hemingway’s short story “The Snows of Kilimanjara” may make a resurgence in the coming years, as the African snows, once “as wide as all the world…and unbelievably white,” of the sky-high peak could be completely obsolete within as little as 12 years. Lit. Is the Internet making you illiterate? Colson Whitehead on choosing What to Write Next: play darts! The Millions has compiled a descriptive list of Difficult Books.  I like this.  Let’s read them. Somerset Maugham broke all the […]

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Bites: L Mag Dislikes Tao Lin, Depressing Books, Rewrite of The Prince, the Polanski Problem, Chicago, Ahmadinejad, Conde Nast, and more

L Magazine wouldn’t like Tao Lin.  Apparently only two people came to one of Lin’s readings at a bookstore in California, and the tiny magazine rejoiced.  To contrast, here is what Vol. 1 has said about Lin’s latest novel and publishing imprint. Lit. The Top 10 Most Depressing Books. Another list, The National Book Foundation’s “Top 5 Under 35.” The Millions has a charming essay about one writer’s experience at an artist’s retreat in Wyoming.  The Millions, also, interviewed Tao […]

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Bites: That guy from The Princess Bride, chapbook reviews, Grouper at ATP, intellectual bankruptcy, and more

Lit. Wallace Shawn (above),  the guy who was in The Princess Bride is the son of former New Yorker editor William Shawn?  Wallace Shawn, the guy in Clueless, has a book of essays out?  What awesome weird universe have I woken up to this morning? Everybody thinks Joyce is a fricken genius.  I still don’t get it. The Millions releases the group of nominated books that did not make it on their best fiction of the millennium list.  James Wood, […]

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Bites: Beast Books, Nick Hornby, Zeitoun haikus, Palin’s ghostwriter, and more

Daily Beast innovator Tina Brown is, in a joint venture with Perseus Books Group, starting a new imprint called Beast Books. The imprint will forgo the typical publishing schedule, which is, as Brown sees it, an untimely process that misses important opportunities to attract readers. At Book Beast, the entire process of writing and publishing (beginning with an e-book) will take a mere two to four months. Lit Nick Hornby interviewed at Flavorwire Write a haiku and you could get […]

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Roman Polanski: Unwanted & Undesirable

By Matthew Caron Roman Polanski was arrested yesterday in Switzerland and faces a likely extradition back to the United States after fleeing from sentencing at the conclusion of a rape trial in Los Angeles that lasted from the spring of’77 into February of ‘79. Initially charged with rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, lewd and lascivious acts upon a child under 14 and furnishing a controlled substance – methaqualones, i.e. the ‘ludes he slipped into her champagne – to […]

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