“Over three decades of almost constant composing and recording, he would amass over sixty LPs, running the gamut from early records with his band the Mothers of Invention that helped to create the milieu we think of as the Sixties, to caustic send-ups of that same counterculture, doo-wop pastiche, tape cut-ups, film scores, gonzo cabaret, big-band charts, way out prog, show tunes, music composed entirely on and for the Synclavier digital sampler, full-score orchestral music, and thousands of scabrous, exploratory guitar solos.” On Frank Zappa, music theory wizard and occasional public intellectual.
I Have a Mortgage
Me and Myself
What is the personal essay, and where could it go from here? In The Boston Review, Merve Emre traces two paths.
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Art, Lit, and Finnegans Wake
"I'm a writer through and through, but the art world—to a large extent—provides the arena in which literature can be vigorously addressed, transformed, and expanded." Frederic Tuten interviews Tom McCarthy about the overlap between the visual arts and literature, the importance of reading, and living, voraciously, and the power of Finnegans Wake for BOMB Magazine. Pair with our own Nick Ripatrazone's review of BOMB: The Author Interviews.
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“You hurry the day when Colum McCann serves you a chalupa”
“Hey, I noticed you checking out my tote bag. I’m sure you see a lot of totes on the train, all about food co-ops or public radio or theater repertory companies. But me, I use this expanse of unbleached cotton-canvas blend to say one thing: I love books.”
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Company Men
The office novel, by nature, is a tricky construct, if only because your average white-collar job doesn’t offer much in the way of fiction-worthy moments. That said, recent books like Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris demonstrate how fruitful it can be to wring drama out of the rat race. In the latest issue of Dissent, Cubed author Nikil Saval delves into the contradictions of office fiction. FYI, Saval wrote a Year in Reading entry for us.
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The Social Function of the Novel
Recommended reading: Tim Parks asks "what is the social function of the novel?"
What a Crack-Up
Did F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Crack-Up" essays -- in which the author began to chronicle his mental collapse -- usher in and anticipate the rise of autobiographical writing in America?
Praise the Man
"Finally, without my wife, who served as editor, research assistant, and soul mate, this project could never have been finished.” On gendered expectations and book acknowledgments.