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The Missing Links

Dear Monsieur Horkheimer, It is over a year since I sent you my last résumé of French literature. Unfortunately it is not in literary novelties that the past season has proved most fertile. The noxious seed that has sprouted here obscures the blossoming plant of belles-lettres with a sinister foliage. But I shall attempt in any case to make you a florilegium of it. [via A&L Daily] * Jonathan Coe on working with the High Llamas: “I’ve always loved music more than I’ve loved language; and because I invariably find a line of melody more compelling than a line of thought, I find listening to songs an unsatisfactory experience. When a song is sung, all that I really hear is the music: the words wash over me and the human voice becomes just another element in the instrumentation.” * The lost tapes of Delia Derbyshire found (including a ”dance track 20 years ahead of its time”) * $25000 for a first edition of Douglas Adams‘ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy? Though it does include the typewriter he knocked it out on * Great opening lines from sci-fi novels * Heroes of Popular Wars * For Alan K, an Identity Theory interview with Scott Heim: ”At the risk of sounding self-important, I guess I do feel that writing a novel is sort of the ultimate achievement; then again, it’s also the most painful and lonely and potentially soul-destroying. The fact that fewer and fewer people read nowadays makes the task of writing a novel even more difficult..” * Down and Out on Murder Mile, Tony O’Neill’s new blog * Underneath the Bunker’s Gregory Riecke is now piercing the mists of obscure European literature * 50 outstanding literary translations from the last 50 years * Spaces repeating, BLDGBLOG interview Tom McCarthy [via Maud Newton] * Paul Collins has some useful advice for book thieves: “Aside from a face-melting Ark of the Covenant, a Shakespeare First Folio is the lousiest loot in the world to steal.” * “Writers like Sillitoe created a cultural template for the individual rebel that has been with us ever since” Mick Hume on the 50th anniversary of Saturday Night, Sunday Morning * 10 things you need to know about Haruki Murakami: MURAKAMI REALLY LIKES MUSIC..One interviewer visited Murakami’s flat and found a room lined with more than 7,000 vinyl records.” * [Missed this] Hipster Fight Club: They could have been watching some awesome breakdancing group or an unusually good street magician. But instead, two shirtless guys were flopping around on the ground, grunting and grating one another’s faces across the cobblestones. One guy pinned the other and a shirtless ref called the match. Both fighters leapt up, gave each other the universally-approved one-armed bro-hug and left the ring together, laughing. [via The Cult]