This week, we were surprised by the news that Emily Dickinson was a passionate baker, and it got us to thinking. Of course, some authors have exactly the hobbies you’d think they would — Hemingway was an avid hunter and fisherman, of course — but others are a bit more surprising. With so many cultural icons and celebrities, we tend to pigeonhole them like characters, fitting them into the roles they are most famous for instead of thinking of them as fully realized human beings — but famous authors have weird hobbies just like the rest of us, a few of which even make us think twice about that literary figure we thought we knew so well. Click through to see a few very surprising hobbies of famous authors, and let us know if you have the inside scoop on any more!
Read More »
We are nearing the end of Banned Books Week and realized that there have been so many titles in the past few years that have ruffled the feathers of elected officials, holy men, and her highness, Oprah. Some have been great, some have been horrible, and some just downright racist. We’re always curious about books that are deemed so dangerous that the public shouldn’t be able to read them. Although we would be taken aback if we saw a friend openly displaying Mein Kampf on her bookshelf, we think that with enough critical distance people can learn a lot from books that uncover the wicked underbelly of society. So read on, dear readers, and tell us what “dangerous books” you’ve read and enjoyed.
Read More »
Disclaimer: we think you should go to college, if you can swing it. But sometimes it seems (especially in the media) that the college experience is just wave after wave of useless information cresting up out of a sea of cheap beer. So we’ve narrowed the whole four years down into ten essential books that will get you to the same place, only perhaps a little drier. If you aren’t going (or going back to) college this fall and wish you were, this list might just tide you over. And if you are, it’s sure to give you a leg up. Click through to check out our (tongue in cheek!) list of ten books that approximate the college experience, and let us know which you’d add or take away in the comments.
Read More »
Peter Nadas’s novel Parallel Stories, which will be released this November, clocks in at well over 1,000 pages. In an interview with New York, the Hungarian author queried, “Why wouldn’t Musil, Mann, or Broch be my contemporaries?” In honor of his ambition, we’ve compiled a list of 10 novels that could also function as doorstops if you decide to give up on them. Maybe you’ve tried to impress your friends by casually mentioning that you’re finally reading Proust, or you’re the annoying person on the train with the weighty tome in both hands, jostling into your fellow passengers because you can’t spare a free hand — whatever the reason, we salute you, foolhardy readers. Have any of you finished the following novels with ease? If so, let us know in the comments section.
Read More »
We’re a month into our literary advice column (the last time was Dean Moriarty from On the Road), and our next character to offer guidance is Howard Roark from Ayn Rand’s 1943 proto-libertarian screed, The Fountainhead. The enigmatic architect answers your questions below, providing uncompromising recommendations for you to take or leave, not that he really cares either way. (Just asking for help implies that you’re a second-hander, right?)
Read More »
Macy Halford recently wrote in the New Yorker‘s Book Bench that she happened upon the “hipster lit” section of Bookhampton while browsing in its Sag Harbor location. The shelves are loaded with the usual suspects: Bolaño, Hornby, and Rimbaud. In the comments section, a rep from Bookhampton gushes, “Bukowski and McSweeney’ [sic] as well as the ultimate female hipster Jennifer Egan (Visit from Goon Squad) and Patti Smith jumped off the shelves this morning… We just put them back!”
Sixty-three years after Anatole Broyard published “A Portrait of the Hipster” in Partisan Review, we are still arguing about what constitutes a hipster. Instead of another essay on the topic, we thought choose a different tack and encourage an alternate list for those Hamptons residents and fair-weather visitors who are sick and tired of their bookstores being invaded by scowling tight-jeaned youths and adults wearing plaid shirts. We came up with a list of novels with acceptable characters for the lily-white denizens of the land where people use “summer” as a verb and argue about ancestors who were on the Mayflower or about who is from “new” money. (South- and East Hampton, we’re looking at you.) What are your suggestions for a Yuppie Lit genre, dear readers?
Read More »
Do you ever think about what your favorite novel would look like if it was published in another country, or even another time? Amazing art blog 50 Watts recently held a contest in which it asked its readers to design the Polish editions of their favorite books, whether contemporary or vintage. Since 50 Watts is chock full of Polish eye candy to begin with, we were confident from the jump that their design-minded denizens would come up with some wonderful stuff. And come up they did! Click through to see the recently announced winners and some of our other favorites from the contest, or get ready to overdose on more imagined book covers over at the site.
Read More »
As Virginia Woolf writes in Orlando: “Vain trifles as they seem, clothes have, they say, more important offices than merely to keep us warm.” In this way, Coco Chanel was correct when she purportedly said that “fashion is not something that exists in dresses only,” as it both shapes and responds to the world around us. The fashion collections below are inspired by works of literature and the trends therein contained, whether its the sober clothes of independently-minded Jane Eyre or the tightly-laced bodices taken from de Sade’s velvet boudoirs. Or we could reverse the process as Sonia Rykiel did and pen the novel in response to the clothing. Anything goes in fashion, right?
Read More »
We all have a few: the books we read when we were young that altered everything. These were the world-changers, the reality-definers, the stories you died over, gushed to your friends about, pushed into the hands of boyfriends and girlfriends, urgently, sincerely. They were pivotal, inspirational, important.
And then: you grow up a bit and return to the books that started a revolution in the way you existed in the world, the ones you thought would change you ever-after, and you think, oh, goddammit, that’s what had me so hot-and-bothered? And this is fine, this is natural. You were changed for a time, and changed again. You get older, you learn some things. Which is not to say the books below ought be avoided altogether. No, these are a few of the books that knocked you off the roof when you were a kid, that fall flat to re-read right now (plus a few suggestions on grown-up alternatives).
Read More »
Mike Daisey is known for his Spalding Gray-style tour de force monologues that recall personal experiences in a social and historical context, tackling such wide-ranging topics as the financial meltdown, the corporatization of the American theatre, and his time working in customer service at Amazon.com. For three new live productions, Daisey trades his solitary table and glass of water for a talented cast of actors to craft a radio program in the mold of Orson Welles’ The War of the Worlds— except, this is billed as the go-to program for “Masons of the 3rd Order and higher.”
We met up with Daisey and his alter ego to talk about the shifty masons, former presidents, powerful business men, and even an Ayn Rand musical about libertarianism and female submission. Learn about the secret order and drink the Kool-Aid after the jump.
Read More »
