The former Mrs. Elizabeth Gilbert–that is, Michael Cooper, the husband Gilbert left at the opening of Eat Pray Love, has apparently written a book about his life after their divorce. Will it ever be published?
Elizabeth Gilbert’s Ex-Husband Can also Write a Memoir
Moco Loco
On the new food-writing website Toque, Elina Shatkin takes chefs Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo (owners of Animal, the wonderful L.A. restaurant exalting all things meaty) to try moco loco.
Take Three
You may have read our review of Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel The Buried Giant. You may also have read our own Mark O’Connell’s review at Slate. For another opinion, you could read James Wood, who writes about Ishiguro’s “prose of provoking equilibrium” in the latest New Yorker.
Fiction by Wes Anderson
Before making films, Wes Anderson used to write fiction. His university literary journal Analecta posts a short story he wrote as an undergraduate in 1989. Did he make the right career choice? (via The Paris Review Daily)
You Don’t Shoot the Beard!
The Observer profiles Baumbach père: Jonathan, that is, whose new novel, Dreams of Molly, is out in May from Dzanc books.
Imagine All the Islands
“It suddenly went off: ‘Oh, fuck, I’m going to try it as a novel, aren’t I?’ A terrifying realization because John Lennon is such an iconic figure—and the feeling I get out around there, this kind of eeriness, this kind of strange haunted reverberation. I mean, the fuckin’ Atlantic is a really weird thing to grow up right beside.” Millions staff writer Bill Morris sat down with Kevin Barry to talk about his new book, Beatlebone, and about the trouble of getting John Lennon’s voice right on the page. Morris has brought you a bit on Barry in the past.
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The Rebellious English Major
In last week’s Brandeis commencement speech, Leon Wieseltier argued that never has there been a moment in American life when the humanities were respected less but needed more. “In recent years I have come to regard a commitment to the humanities as nothing less than an act of intellectual defiance, of cultural dissidence,” he said.
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Stephen FryTube
Some kind soul has uploaded all of Stephen Fry's QI (Quite Interesting) to YouTube. Enjoy.
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Liminal Literature
Vol. 1 Brooklyn's Tobias Carroll presents a roundup of the best new literature blurring the lines between writing and the visual arts, including works that made cameos in Paul Auster's Leviathan and Valeria Luiselli’s The Story of My Teeth. We reviewed the latter novel a year ago here.
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