Jason Bitner (Ed.): Cassette From My Ex: Stories and Soundtracks of Lost Loves
Reminiscing the mix tape Blame it on Twitter, reality television, or the daily sprouting of self-chronicling blogs, but it’s undeniable that we’re living in a voyeuristic culture. Catching glimpses into other’s slice-of-life moments is what we crave; a need that Cassette From My Ex: Stories and Soundtracks of Lost Loves strives to fill.... read more
The Master's Sputum: Unfinished Nabokov Novel Now Open to Examination
In 1962, prodded by an interviewer to share a glimpse of a first draft, novelist Vladimir Nabokov replied, “Only ambitious non-entities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It is like passing around samples of one’s sputum.” Now, more than 30 years after his death, we have an opportunity—against Nabokov’s expressed wishes—to examine such a sample.... read more
Colum McCann, Dave Eggers Win Big at 60th Annual National Book Awards
Last night, at a black-tie ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City, the National Book Awards winners were announced for seven different literary categories. Satirist Andy Borowitz, who runs fake news website The Borowitz Report, emceed the event.... read more
Jonathan Safran Foer: Eating Animals
Jonathan Safran Foer’s novels are dense, energetic, concerned with all things moral and Jewish, pleased with themselves, sentimental, and too wordy for a lot of us. They are like wild Russian dances that leave you breathless and wondering why you stayed on the dance floor. Without argument, he is enormously talented and passionate, but his writing and gimmicks can get in the way of the material.... read more
Catching Up With... Augusten Burroughs
Augusten Burroughs overshares. For almost a decade, the ubiquitous author has plundered his personal life to spit out three memoirs and three collections of personal stories, in addition to a novel. But he says he's not doing it for the money. "I love preservation," he tells Paste. "Writing is the preservation of a memory." Burroughs' latest short story collection is You Better Not Cry, a wry, quick-witted handful of essays that revolve around Christmas. Skipping over the peace-and-goodwill part of the holidays, Burroughs paints the Yuletide season as a catalyst for dysfunction to reach its peak. And he would know. The... read more
The Booky Man: Children’s Accursed Literature
The first book that ever made me cry told the story of an egg-sucking, ringwormy male with one ear chewed off. Did I mention he was yellow? And I was six?... read more
Kanye West: Through the Wire
A humbling reminder of his rights and wrongs With illustrations and commentary explaining 12 of his most well-known songs, Kanye West’s Through the Wire takes on both the title and overall sentiment of his breakout single: “I’m a champion, so I turned tragedy to triumph.” But the book is about more than his near-fatal car accident. Instead, West devotes nearly equal time to explaining his pop culture references and admitting his wrongs, with “Touch the Sky” revealed as an apology letter to the girl he left behind to make music.... read more
Carolina De Robertis: Where The Magic Happens
Hometown: Oakland, Calif. Book: The Invisible MountainFor Fans Of: Giuseppe Di Lampedusa, Roberto Bolaño, HomerThe name of Uruguay’s capital, Montevideo, literally means “I see a mountain” in Spanish. The moniker was given by one of the first European sailors to lay eyes on the verdant land. But it’s really little more than “a mountain the shape of a huge fried egg,” Carolina De Robertis writes in her stunning debut novel, The Invisible Mountain, named for the obscured landform.... read more
The Best Albums, Movies, TV & More From the 2000s
When this decade began, Paste’s website was barely a year old, and the magazine was still a twinkle in its daddies’ eyes. So looking back over the first 10 years of the 2000s feels like looking back over our own history. There hasn’t been a new album, film, TV show, video game or book Paste has covered that wasn’t eligible for our “Best of the Decade” consideration. We had dozens of critics vote in each of these five categories, and then we argued some more until we’d focused our spotlight onto the very best pop culture created during the aughts—whether... read more
Catching Up With... The Men Who Stare at Goats Author Jon Ronson
Jon Ronson knows his way around weird. The author and documentary filmmaker has spent his career tracking down some of the most wildly weird people on the planet to bring their stories to us normal folk. His bestseller, Them: Adventures with Extremists, chronicled the tales of wannabe global dominators like Islamic fundamentalists and neo-Nazi Ku Klux Klansmen. But it’s his book, The Men Who Stare at Goats, that’s putting his name on the map—in part thanks to George Clooney. The book, about the secret army unit of soldiers with psychic power called the First Earth Battalion, was just made into... read more
Robert Mattheu: The Stooges: The Authorized and Illustrated Story
Could use more raw power If the snarling Iggy Pop of 1969 knew his Stooges would be coffee table book fodder, he would’ve scoffed. But here we are, 40 years later, with The Stooges: The Authorized and Illustrated Story. The title tells all: unreleased photos, band testimonials and album reviews. But while rock’n’roll platitudes flourish in books about, say, The Beatles, here the fawning feels awkward. CREEM photographer Robert Mattheu’s stilted writing never dives deeper than anecdotes and base descriptions. We learn Ron Ashton’s apartment, when he hosted Elektra Record executives in 1971, was “too horrible to describe.” The execs... read more
Bruce Springsteen's Autobiography Worth as Much as $10 Million
Most 60-something men can barely get their own grandchildren to listen to their stories. But Bruce Springsteen isn’t your average old dude. For his life story, which he’s currently turning into an autobiography, he could get up to $10 million, reports the New York Post’s Keith Kelly.... read more
The Booky Man: Maus... or There's No Place Like Home for the Holocaust
Comic books in their most familiar form—tales of super-heroes and adventurers—sprang from pulp novel potboilers of the 1930s and ‘40s. They were often lurid, licentious, shocking. In fact, by the 1950s, as America focused on the Red Scare and those dirty Commies tunneling like termites under our American way of life, ‘seditious’ comic books grew so popular among impressionable young people that authorities passed laws banning comics… and even burned them.... read more
New Leonard Cohen Biography Coming in December
You know you’ve made it big when there are two official biographies written about you. So congrats, Leonard Cohen, welcome to the big boy’s club. The second Cohen biography, called Hallelujah: A New Biography and to be released on Dec. 1, will chronicle both Cohen’s origins as a singer-songwriter and his recent resurgence as a sort-of indie godfather.... read more
Berenstain Bears Movie on the Way
In Jan and Stan Berenstain’s beloved children-book series, The Berenstain Bears led simple lives. They learned not to be afraid of the dark, eat too much junk food and talk to strangers. But now, years after its PBS television adaptation, their biggest adventure may be heading to the big screen.... read more
Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis Have Written a Children's Book and it's Coming out Sometime
Decemberists lead singer Colin Meloy and his wife Carson Ellis are certainly no strangers to intra-marital artistic alliance—she’s responsible for the art for all of his band’s albums and of his solo CDs, plus most of The Decemberists’ merchandise and a couple of live show backdrops, too. And, according to Ellis’ blog, sometime soon you’ll be able to add a children’s book to their collective CV.... read more
Broken Social Scene Member Releases Children's Book, Learn to Speak Music
While Rockabye Baby aims to develop a child’s taste for music, Broken Social Scene’s John Crossingham wants to teach them precisely what to do with it.... read more
The Booky Man: The Stranger Among Us
God bless the French. They gave us French kissing, French bread, Brigitte Bardot and Tati. They gave us useful terms: ennui and guillotine. They gave us The Statue of Liberty.... read more
Robert Hilburn Recalls the Death of John Lennon
Reprinted from Cornflakes With John Lennon by Robert Hilburn © 2009 by Robert Hilburn. Permission granted by Rodale Inc.... read more
R. Crumb Illustrates the Bible
Interpretations of the Bible come in every medium—from art to music to film, and are made for any variety of audiences, from blood and guts readings to those of the more family-friendly variety. But this new one, well, this one’s got us thinking…... read more
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