Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story is now a reality. He got to try Google Glass and wrote about the experience for The New Yorker. “When the velvet-rope hostess at the of-the-moment Wythe Hotel bar in Williamsburg stops to take a photo of me with her iPhone, I know exactly what the producer meant. This is the most I will ever be loved by strangers.”
Gary Shteyngart Becomes A Glasshole
I Grow Old
“If there is one thing more depressing than reading other people’s old letters it is reading one’s own.” Becoming T. S. Eliot.
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The Opposite of Slouching
“Aspiring journalists tend to worship at the altar of Joan Didion,” writes Heather Havrilesky (who some of you may know as Polly) in the latest issue of Bookforum. The fact that so many writers look up to Didion as an example necessitates that the lit world find at least one offbeat alternative. In Havrilesky’s eyes, that alternative is obvious: the late Nora Ephron was the anti-Didion, she argues.
A Mixed Media Analysis
Espen Terjesen, a Norwegian graphic artist, teacher, and writer, has put together a striking piece, equal parts graphic novel and academic essay, on Thomas Bernhard.
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John Green vs. Louise Erdrich
“Let me be frank,” writes our own Edan Lepucki for the opening round of this year’s Tournament of Books. “I went into this matchup excited to read The Round House, whereas I approached The Fault in Our Stars with curiosity and trepidation.” But did she wind up pleasantly surprised? Check out the rest of her write-up to see which tearjerker moved on to the next round. (Bonus: Janet Potter on John Green’s heartbreaking novel.)
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