A couple weeks ago, Matt Ashby and Brendan Carroll argued in a Salon piece that David Foster Wallace, who wrote an essay about the television and irony back in the early ‘90s, presciently diagnosed the danger of snark in our own age. Now Peter Finocchiaro, a senior editor at Salon, argues instead that we need irony more than we ever have. You could also read A-J Aronstein’s notes from the DFW Symposium.
Not What You Said Before
A Horror Master’s Horror Comics
Stephen King is working with Dennis Calero to publish a free, weekly eComic entitled "Little Green God of Agony." Readers can check it out on his website. Over at PopMatters, Dominic Umile looks closely at the comic’s emergence, as well as the author’s interest in the horror comics genre.
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Weird: France & Belgium
Recommended recommendations: Weird Fiction Review has compiled a list of notable "weird" French and Belgian writers.
Skateboarding’s Art and Craft
Joel Rice's "Flip" column for McSweeney's discusses the culture of skateboarding. This week he interviews Cole Louison, author of The Impossible: Rodney Mullen, Ryan Sheckler, and the Fantastic History of Skateboarding.
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Literary Libya
Those following this weekend's events in Tripoli will no doubt be interested in Banipal's issue dedicated to Libyan fiction. And, as Moammar Gaddafi's reign appears to be ending, the Guardian's evisceration of his short stories is worth a read. On NPR's site, Hisham Matar also explains the influence of Gaddafi's rule on Libyan writing.
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Party Crasher
Those of you with some knowledge of Pale Fire and Lolita won't be surprised to learn what Nabokov thought of dinner parties. Namely, he thought they were awful, vaguely surreal events, held largely by drunkards with overriding appetites for drama. At The Paris Review Daily, Sadie Stein quotes a passage from “The Vane Sisters” to explain why "It’s hard to think of someone you’d want less at a midcentury faculty tea, save maybe a seething Shirley Jackson.” You could also read our own Garth Risk Hallberg on Nabokov's Ada, or Ardor.
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Their Own Room
Were you aware there’s a new BBC2 show about the lives of the Bloomsbury Group? There is, and it’s called Life in Squares, a reference to a quote that says the group “lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles.” In The New Statesman, Rachel Cooke sits down with the series. You could also read Alexis Coe on Virginia Woolf and Downton Abbey.
AbeBooks’ Most Expensive
Online used book marketplace AbeBooks rounded up the most expensive books sold via its site in October. At the top is a collection of Scottish music from 1782 that went for $8,500. Also on the list are some collectible Tolkien and Hemingway. (Thanks, Laurie)
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