According to Chris Richards at the Washington Post, the Ivy League rockers of Vampire Weekend are the unapologetic Bright Young Things of our recession era. Drinking Darjeeling on Daddy’s yacht never looked so good, he says, and their second album, Contra, out yesterday, sounds pretty good too.
New Vampire Weekend
Ray Bradbury Passes Away
Ray Bradbury, author of such classics as Fahrenheit 451, has passed away at the age of 91, reports io9. I’ll always remember the first time I read The Veldt (PDF), and being scared out of my adolescent mind.
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#LitBeat gets weird in a basement.
The latest installment of #LitBeat involves musings on puritanical projection, the phrases “ass-banging” and “mucus flaps” and a least one instance of the word “boner.” Our correspondent was there for The New Inquiry read along of Millions contributor Mike Thomsen’s new book, Levitate the Primate: Handjobs, Internet Dating, and Other Issues for Men.
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Atwood Adapted
Netflix and Hulu are set to adapt Margaret Atwood’s novels Alias Grace and The Handmaid’s Tale, respectively. Check out our own Edan Lepucki’s piece on Atwood’s vision of the future.
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Cather People
For The New Yorker Alex Ross describes the role Nebraska’s prairies played in Willa Cather’s writing, his encounters with Cather people, and how he became one himself. “From this roughshod Europe of the mind, Cather also emerged with a complex understanding of American identity. Her symphonic landscapes are inflected with myriad accents, cultures, personal narratives—all stored away in a prodigious memory. “