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literati fistfight

March 21, 2005

 

richard hell goes off

As a poet now, Richard Hell is perhaps not as good as he could have been had he not spent upwards of twenty years playing music. Fuck you. If you want to say something like that, say it to my...
Posted by xtop at 10:46 PM | Comments (4)
 


February 20, 2005

 

selah

"We do have confirmation that Hunter Thompson was found dead this evening of an apparent self-inflicted wound"...
Posted by xtop at 11:28 PM | Comments (9)
 


February 04, 2005

 

the other hollywood

happytrac14: Why should we care about the history of porn, and what is the conclusion of your book? Legs McNeil: It's just the story of porn. I don't give a f**k if you care about it or not. Don't...
Posted by xtop at 01:19 AM | Comments (2)
 


January 14, 2005

 

kafka on the shore

Got the call today from my local bookstore, they're now holding one for me and it is apparently available for purchase as we type, though amazon and murkami's official site says not until Tuesday. Still...new Murakami!...
Posted by xtop at 01:02 PM | Comments (2)
 


November 28, 2004

 

the dna of literature

Welcome to the DNA of literature—over 50 years of literary wisdom rolled up in 300+ Writers-at-Work interviews, now available online—free. Founder and former Editor George Plimpton dreamed of a day when anyone—a struggling writer in Texas, an English teacher in...
Posted by xtop at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)
 


October 21, 2004

 

fear and loathing, campaign 2004

"I look at elections with the cool and dispassionate gaze of a professional gambler, especially when I'm betting real money on the outcome. Contrary to most conventional wisdom, I see Kerry with five points as a recommended risk. Kerry will...
Posted by xtop at 04:01 PM | Comments (0)
 


July 25, 2004

 

will christopher baer: .com

so here’s the deal. I promise not to let this sucker die. too many good people have worked too hard to make the site happen, and I by god intend to nurture it. I will post fresh log entries long...
Posted by xtop at 09:56 PM | Comments (0)
 


July 09, 2004

 

wow

sweet...
Posted by xtop at 07:18 PM | Comments (4)
 


March 29, 2004

 

suffer the fool

I see myself in the dark glass of a storefront window. The image is wavering, untrue. I slip a cigarette from my pocket with pinched fingers and stare at it for two or three minutes, maybe longer. Then place it...
Posted by xtop at 09:39 PM | Comments (0)
 


 

super goat man

When Super Goat Man moved into the commune on our street, I was ten years old. Though I liked superheroes, I wasn’t familiar with Super Goat Man. His presence didn’t mean much to me or to the other kids in...
Posted by xtop at 06:18 PM | Comments (4)
 


March 05, 2004

 

will christopher baer: communicado

Will Christopher Baer's blog....
Posted by xtop at 07:12 PM | Comments (0)
 


March 02, 2004

 

George Saunders' Amendment

In the town where I live, I have frequently observed a phenomenon I have come to think of as Samish-Sex Marriage. Take, for example, K, a male friend of mine, of slight build, with a ponytail. K is married to...
Posted by xtop at 07:18 PM | Comments (0)
 


February 16, 2004

 

everyone vs. everyone

Close observers of Amazon.com noticed something peculiar this week: the company's Canadian site had suddenly revealed the identities of thousands of people who had anonymously posted book reviews on the United States site under signatures like "a reader from New...
Posted by xtop at 01:21 PM | Comments (1)
 


February 12, 2004

 

doyle v. joyce

Roddy Doyle, the Booker prize winner and the bard of raucous Dublin demotic, chose a Joyce birthday celebration to slam the epic story of one day in the life of Leopold Bloom as overrated, overlong and unmoving. "Ulysses could have...
Posted by xtop at 11:09 PM | Comments (1)
 


January 10, 2004

 

worshipping the tweed

The only newspaper clipping I've ever held on to. Recently re-excavated from my recently renovated deskspace....
Posted by xtop at 11:24 AM | Comments (2)
 


December 16, 2003

 

they said the same thing to pound

From Vinny: Alright, the best I can remember it: In Hemingway's allegedly non-fictional account from "A Moveable Feast" he was rumored to get some big award from a Parisian literary journal. He was excited or as excited as he could...
Posted by xtop at 09:50 AM | Comments (2)
 


December 03, 2003

 

will christopher baer

"I learned early on that I do everything in binges, drink, work, relationships: A ten-day day writing binge is ideal but it requires total isolation, solitude— no telephone, no mail. That’s why I started checking into motel rooms, what I...
Posted by xtop at 11:42 PM | Comments (1)
 


November 01, 2003

 

mark ames vs. chuck klosterman

Klosterman and his type are one of the reasons why I went into exile (I’m writing this from Moscow). I wanted out of a paradigm in which his type dominated the narrative when in fact his type should be rotting...
Posted by xtop at 02:43 AM | Comments (6)
 


October 17, 2003

 

tibor fischer vs. martin amis

So jettisoning [my former agent] Wylie was very much the right decision. It still gives me a satisfying glow to think of it. But I did wonder, what does Wylie actually do all day long? Is he still writing poetry?...
Posted by xtop at 10:14 PM
 


October 15, 2003

 

booker prize fights

Predictably enough, there were a couple of sticky moments. The extended discussion that saw Martin Amis's Yellow Dog squeezed on to the longlist by the width of its collar ended with one judge, avid to clinch the argument, reading aloud...
Posted by xtop at 01:29 PM
 


October 09, 2003

 

Jonathan Lethem & Me

this is a long one, bear with me So I interviewed Jonathan Lethem a few weeks ago, an event that filled me with as much exuberance as it did abject flopsweat. Lethem is way up in my pantheon of great...
Posted by xtop at 08:43 AM | Comments (2)
 


October 08, 2003

 

Free Keo!

From NY Newsday. Oddly, no mention of Jonathan. A big break may have turned into a big bust for a Manhattan graffiti artist who created a backdrop for presidential candidate Howard Dean's visit to Bryant Park this summer. Blake Lethem...
Posted by xtop at 07:48 AM
 


September 07, 2003

 

from the acme novelty date book

"Overheard in rural Illinois rest.. "Mom asks 6 year old boy what he's going to be when he grows up. "boy: I'm going to kill myself. You're going to find my dead body."...
Posted by xtop at 10:36 AM | Comments (0)
 


September 03, 2003

 

fortress of solitude - english cover

sure makes the american cover look like total crap...
Posted by xtop at 11:34 PM | Comments (2)
 


August 07, 2003

 

j.g. ballard v. alfred jarry

Oswald was the starter. From his window above the track he opened the race by firing the starting gun. It is believed that the first shot was not properly heard by all the drivers. In the following confusion, Oswald fired...
Posted by xtop at 01:17 AM
 


July 24, 2003

 

the voynich manuscript

When, in 1639, the Prague citizen Georg Baresch wrote to the famous Jesuit scientist Athanasius Kircher that he owned a mysterious book which was written in an unknown script and profusely illustrated with pictures of plants, stars and alchemical secrets,...
Posted by xtop at 10:46 PM | Comments (7)
 


 

N+7

excerpt from THE OULIPO COMPENDIUM: A notorious procedure invented by Jean Lescure that (in Queneau's terse definition) "consists in replacing each noun (N) with the seventh following it in a dictionary." Choose a text and a dictionary. Identify the nouns...
Posted by xtop at 01:02 PM | Comments (4)
 


July 19, 2003

 

bookglut: 7.18

what a gift certificate to amazon got me: Photobooth - Babbette Hines Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace - Gore Vidal Conjunctions: 39, The New Wave Fabulists - Peter Straub (Editor) Eternal Curse on the Reader of These Pages – Manuel...
Posted by xtop at 12:24 AM | Comments (2)
 


July 06, 2003

 

fortress of solitude

Jonathan Lethem's forthcoming masterpiece (no, really) is being pushed by Random House as their big, important book of the high stakes fall season. With good reason. It somehow straddles youth and old age, nostalgia and disgust, punk and soul, comics...
Posted by xtop at 04:35 PM
 


May 21, 2003

 

Shelley Jackson

Shelley Jackson: author, illustrator, hypertext writer. View her bio, doll games and front page stories. Or start from square one....
Posted by xtop at 12:26 AM
 


April 16, 2003

 

who killed lingua franca?

The "apparent demise," noted David. D. Kirkpatrick in a New York Times report on October 18, "elicited exclamations of dismay in the world of letters." ("Eggheads are anguished," began the lead in the Chicago Tribune's story four days later.) Adding...
Posted by xtop at 11:35 PM
 


March 13, 2003

 

fakebook perseveration

The Invisible Library is a collection of books that only appear in other books. Within the library's catalog you will find imaginary books, pseudobiblia, artifictions, fabled tomes, libris phantastica, and all manner of books unwritten, unread, unpublished, and unfound....
Posted by xtop at 08:55 AM | Comments (1)
 


March 08, 2003

 

the author project

One Ring Zero is currently working on a new studio album. Each song will feature lyrics contributed by a differnt author. As of now, the album does not have a title, but will probably be called JUMP INTO MY YELLOW....
Posted by xtop at 01:29 AM
 


an empty telephone Products


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