Morning Bites: Dash Shaw’s Latest, Larry David, “The Rite of Spring” Visualized, Inside Mellow Pages, and More

Looking at New World, the latest graphic novel from Dash Shaw. “But so often when novelists try to do a scene that deals with the art world, if they get the smallest thing wrong, the whole thing––the whole ship sinks. You have to know the codes.” Rachel Kushner talked with The Believer. Hitchhiking with Larry David. Joshuah Bearman: interviewed by The Rumpus. Talking with the folks behind the community library and reading room known as Mellow Pages. Someone made a visual version […]

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Afternoon Bites: Best Music Writing, Ben Tanzer, Richard Yates, and more

The 2011 edition of the Best Music Writing anthology is out now, with readings to follow next week in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Michaelangelo Matos has compiled links to nearly all of the pieces listed as honorable mentions in this year’s volume. The next pick for Chuck Palahniuk’s book club? Ben Tanzer’s You Can Make Him Like You. (Our review is here.) When Richard Yates met Larry David… In today’s “Vol.1 editors linking things they’ve written” department, may we present Tobias Carroll’s […]

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Morning Bites: DeLillo’s “Underworld,” 10 pages of Minor, Zola Jesus, and more

Michiko Kakutani on why Don DeLillo’s 1997 “masterpiece,” Underworld, is still very worthy of your time. The first ten pages of Kyle Minor’s forthcoming book, The Sexual Lives of Missionaries, are available at Guernica.  (Via HTML Giant) Maybe reconsider inviting Slavoj Žižek over to dinner? EMA and Zola Jesus cover “Crimson and Clover.” Is Larry David getting in touch with his feminine side?  The A.V. Club reviews last night’s Curb Your Enthusiasm.

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The Coen Brothers and the Return of the Middle-Aged Jewish Man

By Jason Diamond Using names like Woody Allen, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and Leonard Michaels, a case could be made that there is an entire genre focusing solely on the neurosis of middle-aged Jewish men. John Updike must have thought so, take his character Henry Bech for proof. But while Bellow, Michaels, and the WASP king Updike are all dead, Roth is still good (a bit depressing maybe, but in a good way) and Allen is more content on using […]

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