Are you a computer? Do you reside in a tasteful brownstone in Park Slope or Fort Greene? If so, you surely keep up with The New York Review of Bots. (If not, you must be embarrassed.) (h/t Jared Keller)
Keeping Up with the Chip World
Goodies from The New Yorker
In this week’s New Yorker, James Wood critiques Paul Auster, while his sometime-subject Don DeLillo offers refreshingly offbeat short fiction.
●
●
“Life was not cake.”
Melville House has one of the short stories from Tao Lin’s Bed up for your noontime reading pleasure.
●
●
Do You Listen to Your Hunch?
Complex problems do not necessarily need complex solutions, and more detailed analysis does not necessarily improve a decision, but often makes it worse. In other words: sometimes it’s better to listen to your gut. What do you do?
Jenny Zhang on the Importance of Funny Writers
Jenny Zhang on "the hardest and most worthwhile thing to achieve in writing:" making people laugh.
●
●
●
Sometimes You Feel
Can’t wait for Haruki Murakami’s new novel? You’re in luck: Slate just published an exclusive excerpt from the book. Sample quote: “No matter how quiet and conformist a person’s life seems, there’s always a time in the past when they reached an impasse. A time when they went a little crazy. I guess people need that sort of stage in their lives.” (You could also read Ben Dooley’s review of 1Q84.)
New Michael Lewis Book On the Way
Michael Lewis’s next book, which is due to hit shelves in March, will be concerned with “the financial world.” And that’s really all we know about it at this point.
●
●
The Miserable Wonderfulness of M. Houellebecq
The second issue of Chicago’s crackerjack The Point, having thrown caution to the wind, tackles the prickly genius of Michel Houellebecq: “Houellebecq has published four novels, all of them bitter and miserable.”