Sunday Brunch With Grimod de la Reynière

Is it fair to be jealous of a guy dead since 1837? A marvelous painting of a gourmand at his table hangs in the Musée Carnavalet in Paris — a portly, pink-faced figure happily gorging on a regal casserole, with a bottle of wine at one elbow and a luscious-looking soufflé at the other. I’m also going to go ahead and assume that this is the guy they got the name for the bakery that serves my favorite almond croissant […]

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Bites: Is New York Bad for Writers?, Should Bookstores Rethink Shelving?, East of Eden as Performance, the Death of the Man of Letters, How to Get Rid of Hipsters, and more

HTMLGiant asks if New York for writers is The Place to Be, or whether it’s just too damn expensive. Lit. Should bookstores shelve by publisher rather than author? (Thanks, The Rumpus) How East of Eden became a performance piece. A surprisingly interesting picture essay of the last 10 years of Nobel Prize winners in literature. The “slow death of the man of letters”? Hm. Shakespeare’s endless Answers: Why it’s smart to be a Shakespearean fool. Books as art. Very cool. […]

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