I dare you not to be charmed by Margaret Atwood’s account of becoming a Twitter user. “Despite their sometimes strange appearances, I’m well pleased with my followers.” (via kottke)
Atwood in the Twittersphere
Honor My Profession
For Your Viewing Pleasure: an animated lecture by Kurt Vonnegut in which he talks about man-eating lampreys and warheads filled with sperm. It is a lot like what it sounds like.
Not Quite a Review
“This is a tricky novel to review. I’m not even sure it is a novel. And I’m not certain as to whether its fragmentary nature belies an organic structure of astutely sewn intention or is merely a disingenuous device to conceal a let’s-get-something-out cobbling together of unpublished material lying around the writer’s desk. What I can tell you is this: I was powerfully engaged and richly entertained by Sergio De La Pava’s Personae.” (Related: our own Garth Risk Hallberg wrote a profile of De La Pava.)
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Film Critics, A Dying Breed
The new media revolution has massacred the book review sections at many national newspapers, but it’s been just as unkind to movie reviewers. At his Salt Lake Tribune blog, Movie Cricket, SLT film critic Sean P. Means keeps a list of all of the movie reviewers who’ve gotten the axe.
Hollywood Horror
What if H.P. Lovecraft’s work were set in Hollywood instead of New England? At The Toast, Kevin Sharp writes Lovecraftian gossip columns. “Two very famous couples, both well known for their complicated personal lives and grand professional successes (less known, perhaps, for the horrid dark secrets that throb and scream in their antediluvian Hollywood mansions), met for a fateful dinner.”
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Talking with Norman Rush
“For me, authenticity of setting is a kind of sine qua non for the feeling that a scene has been correctly done. I become unnerved if I haven’t got a ground plan, don’t know where my characters are. It’s a matter of personal psychology, I guess. I’ve always collected notes on settings. Most, of course, I’ll never use.” At the Tin House blog, Tim Horvath talks shop with Norman Rush.
Finish that book. Finish that burrito.
Our own Mark O’Connell has an excellent piece over on The New Yorker‘s books blog detailing his propensity to abandon burritos books, even good ones, halfway through.
Hurricane Reads
East Coasters can prepare for Hurricane Irene by reading Hart Crane‘s “O Carib Isle” (via W.W. Norton & Co.) or William Carlos Williams‘ “The Hurricane” (via Proustitute). The Book Bench has also compiled a list of “Six Shorts to Read During a Hurricane.”
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Two Ways of Looking at Kapow!
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