books, eggers, fiction, greg ames, johnny marr, links, lit randomness, literary, review
In books, lit randomness on May 18, 2009 at 1:57 pm
We try to do Lit Randomness every Mon and Wed.
Dave Eggers, of McSweeney’s notoriety, and his brother Toph (yeah, that brother from that book) do their first interview together to promote their new book on Cold Fusion: At Paste. BTW, help save Paste.
Intro by Johnny Marr to new punk fiction anthology: At 3am.
Interview w/ Greg Ames, author of Buffalo Lockjaw: At Maud Newton.
All-time 10 ten best and worst mothers in comics: From Newsrama (h/t Fangirls Attack)
Poets ranked by beard weight: At Journey Round My Skull (h/t Bookslut blog)
The Millions’ Staff must-have subscrip list: At The Millions.
book forum, books, literary, richard ford
In Uncategorized on March 17, 2009 at 8:45 pm
For whatever reason, I really like Richard Ford’s trilogy about Frank Bascombe. Maybe I’m obsessed with age and time and place, as I also really enjoyed Updike’s Rabbit adventures.
In this article from BookForum, Ford talks about how Bascombe never was meant to be an “everyman” which I call BS on. Bascombe is the quintessential everyman–his suburban life with a culmination into real estate along with estranged family circumstances. Of course some of his events are eccentric for purely humorous reasons–but at the same time they portray an endearing American-ness to them. Which is to say if a book, a character strikes a chord with the vox populi like Bascombe, it’s okay if he’s an everyman. An everyman to express what we’re all feeling.
The best: “If it seems that fear played a large part in conceiving these three books, it might just be that fear plays a large part in any work that aspires to the lofty condition of literature. Fear of the unknown. Fear of failure, again. Fear of not, at least, trying to meet the challenge of one’s youthful aspirations.”-Richard Ford about his trilogy on Frank Bascombe.
interviews, literary, tao lin, urban elitist, writing
In Uncategorized on February 23, 2009 at 4:33 pm
The Urban Elitist is putting together a series of interviews with not big-time authors about how they make money. Here’s one with Tao Lin. Anybody who visits random literary websites has run into Tao Lin. He’s all over the place (I think he once tried to befriend everyone on Goodreads). His style is jarring in a good way, and his comments always pithy and sarcastic–like he’s putting on performance art for himself like Joaquin Phoenix’s recent binge. (h/t largehearted).
The best: “I feel that having a blog increases the amount of abstract space “Tao Lin” takes up in people’s lives. When a person looks at my blog they see my name and the books I have published (the header), causing other information that they “know” to exist less, to a degree, and be replaced by information about me and my oeuvre, which causes them to be more inclined maybe to buy my books or talk about me during awkward silences…”-Tao Lin
