Susan Cheever
Some might say addiction is a disease of perception. For example... read more
Thomas Pynchon writing noir detective novel
Thomas Pynchon is a famous recluse, his identity, career status and location always having been a subject of speculation. He hasn't published often, and now, less than two years after his unwieldy sixth novel, Against the Day (more than a thousand pages of what The Economist called "rambling, pompous and often completely incomprehensible" prose), news of a compact genre-novel hits.... read more
Art Spiegelman
Twenty years before the book-length Maus won a Pulitzer, Art Spiegelman... read more
Sarah Vowell
The time would seem right for a hipster micro-history of... read more
Date set for Nobel Prize in literature
This week, the literary community has been talking about one Horace Engdahl, the heretofore unknown permanent secretary of the Nobel Foundation. On the heels of releasing the announcement date for the prize in literature—Oct. 9—Engdahl gave a controversial interview, telling the AP that "Europe still is the center of the literary world... not the United States." ... read more
Jack Kerouac manuscript unrolled at Columbia College
“I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.” - Jack Kerouac, On the Road ... read more
Publishers enter bidding war for Tina Fey book
It's been a very good season for 30 Rock creator Tina Fey. A few weeks back, she picked up three Emmys, including Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Lead Actress. Since then, the infamous Sarah Palin likeness has kept her on screen and in the news.... read more
Cormac McCarthy
Until 1992, with the publication of the National Book Award-winning... read more
Hayden Carruth: 1921-2008
Hayden Carruth, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet known for his portrayals of rural, working-class New England, passed away Monday after a series of strokes. He was 87.... read more
ALA launches 27th Banned Books Week
It seems fitting that this year's Banned Books Week began on the heels of Saturday's National Book Festival, hosted by Laura Bush in Washington, D.C. The freedom to read will be celebrated all over the country with events that typically include wine-and-cheese soirees at indie book stores, readings at metropolitan libraries and challenged-books displays behind glass cases in elementary schools. But there's an even simpler way to show your support your right to read what you want: pick up a banned book.... read more
Guillermo del Toro to co-write trilogy of vampire novels
Since the Potter-likeTwilight craze, vampires have been popping up in every media form—copycat novels, remakes of Swedish monster movies, and most recently in the awesome new HBO series True Blood. The trend is undeniable, especially now that it's even jumping genres: Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro—known for the screenwriting and direction of offbeat, intensely visual movies that showcase the fantastic—has signed on with HarperCollins to complete a trilogy of vampire novels. ... read more
Alec Baldwin hesitant to promote the book he's promoting
"I wish I weren't here. I wish I weren't doing this," Alec Baldwin began his 20-minute speech at the inaugural book signing for his memoir A Promise to Ourselves. The Manhattan event was attended by more than 100 people, 20 of them outside the bookstore, marching with picket signs. ... read more
Tom Wolfe's Charlotte Simmons to become HBO series
Tom Wolfe’s 2004 college expose I Am Charlotte Simmons turned out to be thick in more ways than one. Despite well-publicized research and one of the sharpest eyes for social satire in the genre's history, the 676-page tome was angrily dismissed by critics and by many in college circles as shrill, obvious nonsense. ... read more
Danny Goldberg releases rock and roll memoir
Danny Goldberg's aptly-titled memoir Bumping Into Geniuses, was released by Penguin-imprint Gotham Books on Sept. 18.... read more
Ira Glass, Paul Simon, others to host 826NYC benefit
826NYC, brainchild of McSweeny's wizard David Eggers, will be having its third annual Bookeaters benefit next month to raise money for their children's writing program. The program has attracted the likes of David Byrne, Sufjan Stevens and Feist in years past, and this year's line-up looks no less impressive. ... read more
American Psycho heading to Broadway
There had better be a song about the cat-gobbling ATM. ... read more
Laura Bush hosts her last National Book Festival
Tomorrow, Sept. 27, rows of white tents housing booksellers, writers, and organizations that promote reading and literacy, will take over the National Mall. In the eight years since Laura Bush founded the National Book Festival, its patronage has more than quadrupled, and this year's events promise to bring in at least 120,000 people.... read more
Catching Up With... Chuck Palahniuk
When a young Chuck Palahniuk pitched his novel Invisible Monsters to publishers, it was rejected because it was too disturbing. His response was to fill his next novel, Fight Club, with even more disturbing and violent events and dub himself a writer of “transgressional fiction”... read more
Natsuo Kirino (Trans. Philip Gabriel)
Entering Kirino’s dark fictional worlds demands total submission to her... read more
Mark Twain House, nearly bankrupt, holds fundraiser
As the mortgage crisis occupies a daily space on the front page, it's somehow even more demoralizing to discover that the panic isn't limited to the cul-de-sac.... read more
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