Will Self, “the only gay writer in Britain who’s a practising heterosexual” * Jessa Crispin on Re-Make/Re-Model: Becoming Roxy Music: “Michael Bracewell’s history of Roxy Music does not go for conventional thinking — not about the band, and certainly not about how to write a rock biography. There are no stories of life on the road or time spent in recording studios. Bracewell, a British novelist and journalist who has written extensively on art, music and fashion, decided to focus on the path each band member took to get to Roxy Music. Eno and Ferry do not even meet until page 335.” * Some good reading in the July Bookslut: interviews with Aleksandar Hemon & Lisa Appignanesi; Reading Ulysses; Alberto Manguel and the new Alexandria; Hollywood Madam on Belle de Jour; Anais Nin’s Winter of Artifice reviewed * Jonathan Coe on writing: “I’m very undisciplined. I stare at the computer until I get bored, which takes about five minutes” * What makes bad fiction bad? asks J Robert Lennon: “I think we–meaning, you know, literate culture–have a problem talking about why we dislike things. We’re pretty good at praise–it’s not unusual for somebody to tell me they like a book, and then tell me precisely why, and for me to read the book and like the same thing. “The characters are hilarious.” “It has an exciting plot.” “The prose is clear and engaging.” But ask somebody why they don’t like a book, often you’ll get something like “It just sucks,” or “It’s boring.” There are, of course, specific things that make the book bad, but we often just can’t put our fingers on them. I believe that book reviewers, and all readers, for that matter, could use a refresher course on criticism–and I don’t mean, like, literary theory, I mean simple, ordinary expressions of dissatisfaction.” * John Sutherland laments the end of “proper” lit-crit * A review of Dzanc Books’ Best of the Web 2008, guest edited by Steve Almond * An interview with Lorrie Moore: “I was obsessive with writing, but I wasn’t ever disciplined. Because if you’re obsessive you don’t need discipline. You just do it all the time. Why would you impose a regimen, when this is your love?” * And Lorrie Moore reads ‘Paper Losses’ * Sub Pop is 20: “The label has continued to be crucial to the Seattle scene: It could be argued that Band of Horses and Fleet Foxes would not have received the exposure they did without Sub Pop’s international appeal. But to put it in simpler terms, Sub Pop put this city’s music scene on the map for good. Nowadays, it’s hard to find someone who doesn’t equate Seattle with Sub Pop.” * I don’t need Simon Schama to tell me Leonard Cohen is a Great Lyricist; do you? * The Village Voice talk to Damon Albarn about Honest Jon’s: “It was in the early ’90s that I started going in there. But I didn’t really talk to anyone there till the late ’90s. I’d just buy a record and then scuttle away.” * To bookmark: Peter Murphy’s Blog of Revelations, a fine blend of literature and music * * Cafe Babel celebrate Rosemonde Pujol’s Un petit bout de Bonheur and female masturbation: “It is so ubiquitous in our modern societies, from the amusing incident in American Pie to the masturbatory tales of Bukowski or Philip Roth, the former featuring a telephone (Memories of a Dirty Old Man) and the latter a ‘superb joint of purplish raw meat’ (Protnoy and his Complex) [sic]. Yet the same can not be said for female masturbation, who because of their history of unjust domination, have cultivated a certain modesty and introversion. Therefore in recent years, being more open about it has become a means to move towards a greater equality between the sexes. Pujol’s book is just one example of a new, emerging sexual vision of the female body that intends to end the culture of silence definitively through an active and reactive over-portrayal of it.” * Kafka’s papers come to light and Mark Twain makes the cover of Time * 32 sci-fi novels you should read [via Largehearted Boy] * Elizabeth Hand remembers Thomas Disch.
First posted: Friday, July 11th, 2008.
Leave a comment:
