Overrated Writers
Yeah Whatever Go Already
Brooklyn will get over it pretty quick.
Looking At You
(I've been on a little vacation, but here are some links you might like. The image of an eye is by Susan Manvelyan, via BoingBoing.)
1. Here's a really good piece by British novelist Tom McCarthy, one of the brighter literary lights of our time: Technology and the Novel: From Blake to Ballard.
2. Jackson Ellis interviews poet Diane DiPrima.
3. Tod Goldberg: Glimmer Train Is The Best Death Metal Band Ever: A Guide To Literary Journals.
Unbearable: The Worst Book I Ever Read
A casual society of underground/alternative-minded writers calling themselves The Unbearables have been spreading joy and literary wisdom around downtown New York City for as long as I can remember. They protested the cravenness of the New Yorker magazine and the growing commercialism of the surviving Beat Generation writers during the 1990s, and now they're back with The Worst Book I Ever Read, a diverse collection of essays about terrible reading experiences that, I think, many literary folks will relate to. I interviewed ringleader Ron Kolm about this book.
Levi: The Worst Book I Ever Read shows a really eclectic range of choices. We've got the Bible, a dictionary, a 5500 page autobiography by Henry Darger. Michael Carter hates John Locke, and Sparrow picks a psychology book. Were you surprised by the range of responses?
The Overrated Writers of 2006
Overrated Writers, Part Four: Cormac McCarthy and Jonathan Lethem
Some readers find Cormac McCarthy's stiff, humorless syntax appealing. I guess this is the way people talk out on the wild western frontier, in long flat sentences, with no commas to spare. Here are the first lines from The Crossing, the first volume in Cormac McCarthy's acclaimed Border Trilogy:
Overrated Writers, Part Three: William Vollmann
Overrated Writers, Part Two: Joan Didion
Overrated Writers, Part One: Philip Roth
