Chunky > Smooth
Dinner with Mr. Koch
"I don’t want to write ‘funny’ books where we all have to laugh our heads of all the time. The humor should come from behind, where we don’t expect it. And the life of a well-known writer is something you can laugh about quite easily." On the occasion of his new novel Dear Mr. M, our own Claire Cameron interviews Herman Koch over at Salon.
“Tell me the difference between entity and eternity.”
Poet Kazim Ali on Ramadan at The Kenyon Review.
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Curiosities: No Glamour in Publishing
Want to catch up on John Updike in a single summer?Dick Cavett reminisces about the time Updike and John Cheever appeared on his talk show... together.Clancy Martin on his failed attempt to become the world's largest maker of Fauxbergé eggs and how he evaded the Russian police.Ward Sutton literalizes the idea of the cartoonish critique at the Barnes & Noble Review. First up: T.C. Boyle's The Women.Street artists smell a conspiracy around the recent arrest of "Hope"-monger Shepard Fairey, the artist formerly known as Giant.On the 30th anniversary of the Islamic revolution in Iran, our friend Porochista Khakpour looks back.WNYC presents streaming audio (mp3 link) of Zadie Smith's NYPL talk on then-President-elect Obama.Fresh Air's Maureen Corrigan raves about Yu Hua's Brothers.More heads roll in the publishing industry.How close did we come to economic apocalypse?Glamorous publishing people: "No, there is no glamour left in publishing."Food for your ears: "The Dinner Party Download is a fast and funny 'booster shot' of unconventional news, cuisine and culture to help you win this weekend's dinner party." Sarah Shun-lien Bynum was a recent guest.Amid stimulus package largess, arts getting left out in the cold.Epilogue, a new mag that marries short writings, art, and music.File under: links you probably don't need to click on
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On the Stupidity of Entitlement
Year in Reading alumna Ottessa Moshfegh has a new story in this week’s issue of the New Yorker, titled “The Beach Boy.” Moshfegh also spoke with Deborah Treisman about her writing: “Isn’t it hilarious when people are blind to their own arrogance? For some, no amount of American liberal-arts education, charitable contributions, or hours spent listening to NPR will ever wake them up to their own privileged, bigoted, and classist attitudes. [...] One might say that New Yorkers like the folks in 'The Beach Boy' are especially susceptible to the kind of stupidity I love to write about—the stupidity of entitlement.”