On Fred Perry and Lacoste tennis shirts: “Two shirts named after athletes who excelled in a sport that is generally played and enjoyed by people with the leisure and money for expensive lessons and court time.”
Annals of fashion history
Third Annual Asian American Literary Festival
The Asian American Writers’ Workshop is holding the third annual Page Turner: Asian American Literary Festival tomorrow, October 29th in Brooklyn. There you’ll find: Junot Díaz, Amitava Kumar, Min Jin Lee, Jayne Anne Phillips, Granta editor John Freeman, two stand-up comedians, five NBA finalists, seven Guggenheim Fellows, and a Korean taco truck.
●
●
The Hype Cycle
Elif Batuman entertainingly muses on “hype” and resolves to “write five 5-star Amazon reviews this month of books I love by living authors.”
Appearing Elsewhere
My (very) short story “Pretzel Girl” is up at FiveChapters; it’s part of their second annual Infinite Chapters series, wherein a story is posted each day for a little over two weeks. So far, there are stories by Paul Yoon and Jami Attenberg, among others.
●
●
A Really Quick Exorcism
It’s that time of the week wherein I remind you about the hilarious series over at Electric Literature, “Ted Wilson Reviews the World.” This week, Ted tries his best to remain impartial while reviewing that one sneeze he had: “The sneeze I had came on so quickly I didn’t have time to put my hand over my face and the spray went everywhere. It made me wish I had been standing over a salad bar so there would have been a sneeze guard handy. That’s why if I’m about to sneeze at Olive Garden I immediately sprint for the salad bar.”
RIP Elizabeth Jane Howard
British novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard has died at the age of 90. She was famous for The Cazalet Chronicles and her literary love affairs with Kingsley Amis (one of her three husbands), Cecil Day-Lewis, and Arthur Koestler. Despite that her writing career spanned 60 years, she admitted that she found writing frightening in a recent interview. “You’ve got to be pretty nervous about the challenge, the blank page – anything could be on it, it could be crap or it could be wonderful.”
●
●
Brain Food
Nearing the end of your epic NaNoWriMo novel? The good folks at Electric Literature found some music to aid your concentration.
●
●