November 2012
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Lit-Link Round-up
The phenomenal Kathie Bergquist (perhaps the coolest person I can call “my former student”) is launching Ms. Fit, a “web ‘zine dedicated to health, fitness, and wellness from a body-positive, LGBT-friendly feminist perspective.” Look, if you know me, you know…
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Today I have a cold, so I am eating comfort foods and reading Nora Ephron’s early collections, which Vintage has just reissued and I now command you to buy. When she died everyone remembered her as a screenwriter and a longtime…
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“But it’s John Updike in particular that a lot of them seem to hate.”
Upon Philip Roth’s sorta-kinda retirement announcement (my sense is that nothing’s final until everyone is dead) we have been treated to encomia online, and renewed calls that he be given a Nobel. I can’t help but notice that most of…
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The Loft Kid strikes the soul
The New Yorker features an excerpt from Jonathan Lethem’s gorgeous, poetic ode (at times loving, at times sharp, at times you’re not sure) to Andy Warhol and the scene, sense and phenomenon the “Loft Kid” created and left behind. I’ll…
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Have you heard of The Rolling Jubilee?
Occupy, once again, has devised a clever way of thwarting Wall Street. The Rolling Jubilee is an organization created to “free debtors from their debt” and claims: “We buy debt for pennies on the dollar, but instead of collecting it, we abolish…
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The Boys Who Grow to be Good
Over at the Los Angeles Review of Books, Sarah Mesle writes a thoughtful essay about the idea, and complications, of manhood as presented in Young Adult literature. “Why is it that in YA literature — a genre generated entirely to…
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Cheryl Strayed’s Wild: another exciting development!
It looks like the movie adaptation of our very own Cheryl Strayed‘s bestselling memoir Wild is moving along quite nicely. Not only has Wild garnered the interest of Reese Witherspoon, who is set to star, but Strayed has said Nick Hornby…
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Happy Baby Update
From the comfort of his own home, Stephen Elliott gives an update on the newly launched Happy Baby Movie Kickstarter Campaign. “We raised over $8,000 in our first 24 hours. The question we’re facing now is, Where will the next $8,000 come…
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Hurricane Sandy Relief Effort Roundup
News coverage of the Hurricane Sandy aftermath is beginning to wane. But there are still hundreds of thousands of people in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut without power, heat and in many cases, plumbing.
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Philip Roth Calls it Quits
In a recent interview with a French magazine, prolific novelist Philip Roth claims his 2010 novel, Nemesis, will be his last. In fact, Roth claims he is even done reading. Roth says: “And after that, I decided that I was done with fiction. I…
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“I was young just minutes ago”
The latest issue of The Believer features an excellent interview with Maurice Sendak, conducted before his death in May. And because they are very, very nice people they’ve made it available online. Talk about quote-ables, this one’s full of ’em. If you don’t print…
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A Postcard from David Foster Wallace
In the current age of Twitter and Facebook, some authors seem just one click away–a kind of celebrity that is still accessible to the common fan. Frank Cassese tells a story in Guernica about when he received a postcard from David…