Jacob Singer: The fourth section of this novel worked me over. What I mean by thatis I felt like a piece of dough being worked in a repetitivemotion—except it wasn’t physical at all –it was all mind and soul.Rape, anal rape, murder, unrecognizable corpses found by a road, etc.Bolaño isn’t sentimental about how death looks. […]
Both Flesh and Not, the forthcoming essay collection by David Foster Wallace, arrives in strange times. It’s job seems to be to tidy up the Wallace canon, pulling together what might be the last unanthologized bits of Wallace’s nonfiction. However, the collection doesn’t carry the balance of Consider the Lobster or A Supposedly Fun Thing […]
I can usually tell that I’m going to like or not like an album within ten or fifteen seconds. While some make out music likability to an exact science, my sensibility has no pretense like this. Either I like it or I don’t. And it was the test of this theory that inspired me to […]
Let’s say an editor approaches you and wants to see your work. This editor has a cup of coffee that he reveres about as much as he reveres himself. He fiddles with the cardboard ring as you pull out a story that’s bound to publication should you resolve that last muddle of characterization. No, not […]
Old Absinthe House is one of those classic New Orleans bars that all should check out. This photo happened to have been snapped hours before a supposed scuffle between Cuba Gooding Jr. and an employee. To most Americans absinthe is a forbidden and evil drink that turns wholesome English majors into dead-beat poets with no […]
