Apparently Bret Easton Ellis is not a DFW fan.
Tedious and overrated tweeting.
If Bears Were Presidents
Recommended Reading: Three poems by Dalton Day at Hobart. “In the end, there are five bear cubs underneath your porch. You name them after U.S. Presidents. Taft dies of starvation.”
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Civic Duty
Claudia Rankine’s new book of poetry, Citizen, is getting a lot of attention in part due to its meditations on race in modern America. In the latest issue of BOMB, Lauren Berlant interviews the poet, asking her about micro-aggressions, Kara Walker and the implicit tone of the word “citizen.”
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At Year’s End
“Year-end lists are always subjective and incomplete, but they are especially tricky for books. A dedicated film critic can watch every wide release film and a theater critic can go to most every play, but the book critic is faced with an insurmountable mountain of books each year. The sheer number of books is inspiring as a reader, but it can make “best of” lists laughably subjective when the critic has only read a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of books published each year.” This might help to explain the logic and intent of our own Year in Reading series, but it also prefaces Electric Literature‘s list of the top 25 story collections of 2014 (which includes recent Year in Reading alum Phil Klay‘s Redeployment).
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Thomas Pynchon: The Video Game
“Inherent Vice . . . is like a novelization of Grand Theft Auto, claims Nerd World. And hey, they’ve got ten points of comparison to back it up, so you know it must be true. (via)
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The Voice Is Now The Word
Cee Lo Green will be dropping a memoir in 2013, and his press release reads like something that’s gone through four different spins in Google translator: “Talk about art imitating life? Enter into the super-natural, the surreal and the extra-ordinary that is [Cee Lo Green.] Do you think this is by chance? CRAZY? FORGET YOU? After reading this book, there will be no doubt that I am meant to be. CEELO GREEN A.K.A ‘everybody’s brother’ will make you a believer, not only in me, but also…yourself.”
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Rabbit, Realtor
For the low, low price of a quarter of a million dollars, John Updike’s boyhood home could be yours! (via)
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