by Levi Asher March 5th, 2009 8:20pm
I recently wondered what I would think about Jonathan Littell's big new novel The Kindly Ones, an intentionally repulsive exploration of the genocidal Nazi personality that won big awards in France and has now been published, with high expectations, in an English translation. At this point, I've consumed so many articles about the book that I may not need to read it at all.
by Levi Asher March 8th, 2009 4:51pm
If the New York Times Book Review can't sell ads -- and, at 24 pages again, it's obvious that they can't -- they may as well give short shrift to standard industry product and write some kickass reviews of books we're really interested in.
by Levi Asher March 9th, 2009 4:20pm
1. The e-book scene (also known as the d-book scene, if you read Booksquare) is buzzing again with news of Amazon's new iPhone Kindle application, which allows readers to enjoy the considerable benefits of the Kindle store without buying a bulky and expensive dedicated device.
(This is chapter eight of my ongoing memoir of the internet industry.)
On October 28, 1994, Chip Bayers of Wired Magazine posted on Usenet about an ambitious new website called HotWired.com:
I've been peeved, and I've said so, about the high percentage of John Updike memorial articles citing his Rabbit novels (1960's Rabbit Run, 1971's Rabbit Redux, 1981's Rabbit is Rich, 1990's Rabbit at Rest) as his masterpiece.
I grew up thinking of John Cheever as a beautiful writer perfectly encapsulated by one book (his long, thorny career notwithstanding) of short stories with a bright red cover. I don't know anybody who's ever attempted to read one of his novels, and I also don't know anybody who tried The Stories of John Cheever and didn't immediately understand what these stories were and why they were so important. Blake Bailey's new biography reveals Cheever as a self-hating homosexual, bitter and deeply unhappy.
by Levi Asher March 16th, 2009 10:22pm
1. A sheriff in Chicago just can't stand evicting any more people. This is one of the better things Andrew Sullivan has ever posted.
2. Xkcd brings in Quixote.
by Levi Asher March 17th, 2009 10:40pm
2. Xkcd brings in Quixote.
by Levi Asher March 19th, 2009 9:09pm
1. Isn't it somebody's job to say clever things like "Jenny Holzer is the patron saint of twitter"? I guess it falls to me if nobody else wants to. Anyway, noted 90s-era electric sign artist Jenny Holzer has a new show at the Whitney Museum in New York City.
By any rational calculus, I'd be a big fan of 1960s-era postmodernist Donald Barthelme, subject of a biography called Hiding Man written by Tracy Dougherty and touted by Colm Toibin on the cover of today's New York Times Book Review. Toibin describes Barthelme's stories thus:
They take immense risks with tone and content; they bathe the known world in the waters of irony, rhythmic energy and exuberant formal trickiness.
by Levi Asher March 23rd, 2009 8:41am
They take immense risks with tone and content; they bathe the known world in the waters of irony, rhythmic energy and exuberant formal trickiness.
A TechCrunch article titled Why Advertising is Failing on the Internet is making the rounds this morning with a bold claim that the much-hyped advertising model for web-based content is doomed to fail. Eric Clemons offers some good ideas in this piece, but his basic premise doesn't make much sense to me. Here on LitKicks, even as the economy spirals around us, I've been having a pretty good year.
by Levi Asher March 24th, 2009 7:03am
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet, global activist and indie publisher extraordinaire, turns 90 years old today. Here's his LitKicks biography page, and here's the poem we've been running on this site for many years:
by Levi Asher March 26th, 2009 6:49pm
1. I applaud former AIG executive Jake DeSantis for having the nerve to whine in public about having to give back his bonus. But DeSantis misses the larger point: the era of bloated multi-million dollar bonuses for financial firm executives must end -- not just temporarily, but permanently.
by Levi Asher March 28th, 2009 10:44am
It can't feel good to go to work in the morning and find out you got a 5% paycut. So I'll be extra nice to the folks at the New York Times Book Review, which is easy to do because this weekend's issue is pretty good.
by Jamelah Earle March 30th, 2009 12:03pm
The photo above is me, reading Brad Gooch's biography of Flannery O'Connor (appropriately titled Flannery), and my yawning dog. She's a tough critic. Anyway, I've been a fan of Flannery O'Connor since I first read her story "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" back when I was in high school, and as I got older and read more of her work, my appreciation of her grew. In fact, on my personal list of Date Book-Talk Gone Wrong is the following snippet:
1. It's amusing to learn that Faber and Faber editor T. S. Eliot rejected George Orwell's Animal Farm, explaining to Orwell that he sided with the pigs. Since Eliot was a deeply committed political elitist, this position is at least consistent. But I wish George Orwell could have taken a few shots back at Eliot for going on to give the world Rum Tum Tugger and Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.