Vampire killing kits

Here's a gallery of vintage vampire killing kits... scaring!

Démoniak Serie X

Démoniak Serie X is a pubblication featuring french celebrities and politics involved into "insane cameos". There's also a blog about it called Les Actes de *Démoniak.

I Am Maru: The Book

...the famous internet cat has a new book out!
[Previously on... Maru at Unscathed Corpse]

Snobber's Favorite Books

Last week, a friend of mine asked me if I had a list of my favorite books posted somewhere and I realized that I didn't! Not a real list, with explanations and such. So here, friends and readers, is a list of my top ten favorite books. Some are linked to prior ruminations of mine. Though my affections wax and wane, these ten are pretty solid choices, no matter what.

1. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Though To the Lighthouse and Orlando occasionally compete for the representation of my Woolf-obsession, Mrs. Dalloway is the novel I recommend for Woolf-virgins. She's at the height of her powers here in 1925 in this story about life, love, and the moments of being that define who we are.

2. Sophie's Choice by William Styron

If you ever wanted to read a Holocaust novel that's about anything but the Holocaust, Sophie's Choice is a great pick. If you're a downtrodden editorial assistant or aspiring writer, find solace in the character of Stingo. (This transference works even better if you are a South to North transplant). Though the romance in this novel borders on melodrama, it's descriptive moments of Brooklyn and love and sex are completely transcendent; Stryon's lyricism borders on book porn. This novel's first read is so enjoyable you will spend the rest of your life trying to duplicate it.

3. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Probably the most beautiful book written in English by a non-native English speaker. Perhaps it's Nabokov's Russianness that turns his appreciation of the English language into our pure, unadulterated joy. And with a tricky subject manner, he still makes us love and despise these characters equally. When I talk to people who haven't read this novel I just think, what? What are you doing? You know nothing until you have read Lolita.

4. The Loser by Thomas Bernhard

Master of misanthropy, Bernhard's energy for hatred turns into an obsession with life through our failures and hopelessness in the face of fate. Our narrator recounts the suicide of his friend Wertheimer, who gave up at music school when he realized he couldn't compete with likes of Glenn Gould. Bernhard's endless repetition, his constant droning of sorrow and spitefulness becomes the chant of genius. You will want to read everything he's ever written. And you should.

5. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

I say with ease that this book changed my life and continues to change my life every single time I read it. Stumbling upon this thing when I'd just moved to New York and had no idea that Salinger had written anything else besides The Catcher in the Rye was a pure delight. His sheer brilliance at writing dialogue is, in my mind, unparalleled. His books are some of the only ones that can make me laugh out loud and weep like baby. Nine Stories comes in at a close second here, but Franny and Zooey is truly a religious experience.

6. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

After reading this book, the only thing I wanted to do with my life was write. I had no fucking idea that it was even possible to write books like this, and my whole body was jittery with excitement. Every single page of this thing is smart, moving, and stylish. If you are at all interested in the genesis of the nonfiction novel, or creative nonfiction, or if you're just into crime writing, oh holy Lord, get off your butt and get a copy of this book. In this same category I'd place Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem and Janet Malcolm's excellent The Silent Woman.

7. I Love Dick by Chris Kraus

If you are a feminist, and you find yourself exasperated at trying to explain the difference in how art created by women is treated versus art created by men, then look no further for your BIBLE. This pseudo epistolary novel cum treatise on women's art and identity is so fucking good. It will incite a fire under your ass. The good kind. Her honesty and fierceness on sex, love, respect and never-ending struggle between the private and public make this a must-read.

8. Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald

Attempting to describe this book is like trying to describe the Mona Lisa. Why is it so transfixing? I could offer my own explanation, something to do with it's hypnotic rhythm and it's love of sorrow and nostalgia but, just, if you have the time and the energy, just. read. this.

9. Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon

Though I love his showier The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay almost equally, there is something so beautiful about this book that I return to it again and again, always finding something new in its pages. Grady is your typical washed up, pot-bellied, middle-aged novelist who's looking for something to quicken him - he finds it in James, a struggling student with serious issues, maybe a pathological liar. The two find themselves involved in a messy affair concerning Marilyn Monroe's fur-lined jacket she wore when she married Joe DiMaggio. The descriptions of James' writing versus Grady's writer's block are heartbreaking and beautifully written. The perfect winter book.

10. Atonement by Ian McEwan

If I could relive the first time I ever read the chapter when Cecila drops that goddamned vase into that goddamned fountain, I'd be a happy woman. Atonement has practically everything you could want from a novel and so much more. The sheer horror of this book, how quickly it turns from beautiful to horrible and yet somehow remains gorgeous throughout - it's McEwan's masterpiece and I don't think he'll ever be able to top it. Even if you aren't that jazzed about the plot (which I think is fantastic) McEwan's sentences are some of the best in English letters today.

Marina and Ulay

I've been reading When Marina Abramovic Dies, a biography by James Wescott that was published in March during her residence at MoMa. Ever since I saw The Artist is Present, I wanted to know more about Abramovic's personal life. Wescott worked with Marina on the book, and it's undoubtedly slanted a bit in her favor - however, if you're looking for a biography with a balanced look at her work and her private life I highly recommend it. Unfortunately it's more of an "art book" so it's not great for subway rides. I just keep it by my bed and read a little of it every night before I go to sleep.

Marina and Ulay's relationship is the center of the book and of Marina's life - they were together for nearly twelve years, living and working together in intense intimacy. They had originally planned to walk towards each other from the opposite ends of the Great Wall of China, meet in the middle, and get married. When they actually did it ten years later they walked to each other over the course of ninety days, embraced, and went their separate ways. Ulay married his translator from the trip shortly thereafter, and Marina returned to New York. I can't imagine the heartbreak she must have felt (not to mention the exhaustion) on that plane ride home. As she wept when they met on the Wall Ulay told her, "Don't cry; we have accomplished so much." And Marina would go on to accomplish much more without Ulay. I think her incredibly lucky: it was possible for her to do the work. And it has sustained her. At 64 years old she glows.

Catching Up

Shameless Self-Promotion:

Since we last spoke, I wrote a little ditty for one of my favorite sites, The Awl, on how to cast a film adaptation of Les Miz so it will be as successful as Twilight. It was great fun working with Natasha Vargas-Cooper, who edited the series on musicals and is the author of the new book Mad Men Unbuttoned.

Later, I romped over to This Recording with a piece on Spielberg's oft-overlooked masterpiece, Jaws, in honor of shark week. Check it out for more on Richard Dreyfuss' surprising attractiveness in 1975 and Moby Dick analogies.

Today I made my debut at The Rumpus, an incredibly smart culture focused site, with a review of Jeffrey Meyers' The Genius and the Goddess. You may remember my mentioning the book a few posts ago. Though the book intends to be about the marriage of Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe, the finished product is really more of an unflattering, even offensive biography of Marilyn. I've pointed out the issues I had with Meyers' approach.

My professional website now includes a "News" section so you can keep up with the latest, if you are so inclined.

Promotion of others:

In non-Jessica related news, I really enjoyed reading Laura Shapiro's piece on Shirley Jackson at Slate. I also loved her sketches of Hill House that were posted on Writer's Houses.

Richard Morgan's piece on being a freelance writer at The Awl really encompasses everything and more about one of the most difficult, oftentimes obnoxious jobs ever. The section where he describes pitching an idea and having it rejected only to find it on the site several weeks later written by the editor who rejected it is something I think all writers have encountered. I felt this piece. Hard.

Chelsea Biondolillo compared her MFA rejections with famous rejections throughout history at McSweeney's.

Coming Up:

- There are quite a few more book reviews in the works, and an academic paper which I hope you will enjoy.
- For ten days in September I'll be in Berlin, so if anyone has suggestions or recommendations on Berlin-related things, please let me know.
- Soon I hope I will be a proud owner of an iPhone, which means more posting and more images on the blog.
- Exciting professional news to be shared.
- Dying to read Tom McCarthy's C. - will someone send me a copy? Pretty please?
- Currently reading Hans Kielson's Comedy in a Minor Key. Francine Prose called him a genius in the Sunday Book Review and she's probably right.
- Also dying for the new Bernhard, My Prizes. You may remember my Bernhardian worship which began a few years back with The Loser.
- Very, very excited to see the film adaptation of Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. I wrote about the new Sci-Fi a ways back here on the blog.

I AM STILL WRITING MY BOOK PROPOSAL WHICH IS TAKING FOREVER. WORDS OF ENCOURAGMENT AND/OR FREE DRINKS ARE MUCH APPRECIATED.

Hello. And thanks for reading.

Columbine, by Dave Cullen

Although 9/11 and Virginia Tech might ring a little louder in our ears in 2010, I will always remember coming home from school on April 20, 1999, turning on CNN, and trying to make sense of the footage at Columbine High School, both horrified and unable to take my eyes of the screen. Dave Cullen, a journalist for Salon and The New York Times, was one of the first people to report on the shootings, and nine years later, his book, Columbine, recounts the entire story of the murders.

Though this book is not nearly as well-written as In Cold Blood or as compelling as Helter Skelter, Columbine is a thorough account of the events leading up to the shooting, the murders themselves, and their awful aftermath. Cullen describes how Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold initially planned on blowing up the school entirely; they had set nearly 100 bombs throughout the Cafeteria , in the common areas, and in their cars, which, if they had been successful, would have killed practically every person on campus. When the bombs didn't go off, Harris simply took to the top of the hill and started shooting at random. Though the spree would only last forty-five minutes, (until Harris and Klebold returned to the Library where the bodies of the ten people they murdered lay to commit suicide) that day, 15 people would die.

I, for one, didn't know about the bombs until I read this book. Cullen also recounts the myths of Christian martyrdom that flowed through Littleton, Colorado, after the murders, Cassie Bernall's being the most famous. Yes, myths. Apparently, according to eyewitness accounts and testimony from most of the kids in the Library, it was Val Schnurr, not Cassie, who answered "yes" when Harris asked her if she believed in God. Though she had been injured, she survived. Cassie, on the other hand, had no chance to say anything to Eric before he shot her in the head as she hid under the table, her hand also wounded as she tried to shield her face from the blast.

Most moving in Cullen's account is the struggle of the parents of the children murdered and injured that day. Some blame the parents of the killers, only the killers themselves, or blame no one at all. One, who had struggled with mental illness, walked into a pawn shop, asked to see a gun, and when the attendant stepped away, loaded it and shot herself in the head while her daughter was still recovering from her wounds at the hospital. Cullen also describes the Klebold's confusion and pain over Dylan's actions, and how difficult it was to bury him without an uprising from the community.

Eric Harris was a textbook psychopath. His journals indicate as such. Both he and Klebold had been arrested for theft. Harris' parents, in particular, his father, Wayne (a Marine) recognized how sick he was and tried to get him help, first through therapy, and then through a more strict, rehab-like program. He passed the program with flying colors, just a few weeks before he would go on a murderous rampage. Cullen suggests that Dylan, a depressive love-sick loner, was drawn to Eric because he offered a release from his pain.

Columbine is an engaging, impressive book of investigative journalism. Cullen does very little speculating: all the quotations in quotes in the book are actual, cited quotations, and they make up most of the dialogue. If you are looking for a compelling summer true-crime read, this is your book. But don't expect to be uplifted by it. Aside from classifying Eric as a psychopath (using the DSM IV), Cullen doesn't try to explain why he thinks Eric and Dylan did it, or attempt to "make sense" of the tragedy. Even in this thorough accounting of the events, there is no answer to the question "Why?"

The Summer of Literary ADD

A list of books I have begun and not finished this summer, thus far:
Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel
A Time of Gifts, by Patrick Leigh Fermor
The Man Who Loved Children, by Christina Stead
The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson
Paris Trance, by Geoff Dyer
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William L. Shirer
The Dud Avacado, by Elaine Dundy
Bomber County, by Daniel Swift
I Was Told There'd be Cake, by Sloane Crosley
Stranger than Fiction, by Chuck Palahniuk

Of those, I will finish:
The Man Who Loved Children
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Possibly The Dud Avacado

One book I read this summer and loved:
Molly Fox's Birthday, by Dierdre Madden

One book I devoured like there was no tomorrow, then felt terrible: Columbine, by Dave Cullen

The book I have been waiting to read for several months that is finally arriving tomorrow because I had to order it overnight from Amazon because I simply cannot wait any longer: The Genius and the Goddess: Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe, by Jeffrey Meyers

Two books I am so excited about I might explode: My Prizes: An Accounting, by Thomas Bernhard, and C, by Tom McCarthy

P.S. Dear Marilyn, how the hell did you do this to your hair?

Alejandro, and more.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Lady Gaga's long-awaited video, Alejandro:

Gaga looks like Evita Peron meets page-boy meets Madonna. The Fascist streak in this video is fairly appropriate to my reading material right now. I just started The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich and it's absolutely fascinating.

• In un-related news, my column at Bookslut is up. This month's is on Henry James' The Turn of the Screw. The issue also contains a delightful piece about stalking Dave Eggers, and a review of Justin Cronin's new epic vampire novel.

• My friend Peter will be on Jeopardy tonight if you want to tune in at 7pm EST!

I have been wildly allergic to everything lately, and I have five million thousand reviews to write, so I apologize in advance if there is radio silence on the blog. You know I still love you.

Mailer?

I don't really know whether to write this piece about Norman Mailer, or Norris Church Mailer, or James Walcott, who wrote this impressive piece for Vanity Fair called "The Norman Conquest." It's a little odd that I find this piece so entertaining, since I've never read any Norman Mailer (please leave suggestions and advice as to what I should do about this in the comments). However, Walcott's piece is pretty much one of the most whimsically well-written bon-bons of literary reportage that I've read in a while.

Really what I'd like to read is Norris' memoir, A Ticket to the Circus. She was married to the dude for thirty years. In a piece in the NYT a few weeks ago, she claimed that sex was the glue (no, the honey, she corrected herself) that held them together through his insatiable philandering. I don't know whether to respect Norris or hate her. Was Mailer really a genius? You'd have to be pretty great in the sack and a genius and really love your children for a woman as beautiful (and smart) as Norris to stick by you, right?

Walcott's piece was born as a comment to all of the Mailer paraphenalia coming out of the woodwork the past few months. His cook/assistant has written Mornings with Mailer, then there's Norris' memoir, and a mistress memoir by Carole Mallory barfingly titled Loving Mailer. (The jacket! THE JACKET OF THIS BOOK). If you're stuck trying to chose, New York Magazine has this very handy dandy breakdown of the memoirs of Mailer's women.

Wow. I hope when I die there are people vying to tell about my literary legacy. I guess I had better start stabbing people at parties.

Young Female Novelists

I asked and you guys answered!

A list of 20 female novelists from Dilettantsia readers:

1. Vendela Vida
2. Julie Orringer
3. Asali Solomon
4. Becky Curtis
5. Karen Russell
6. Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
7. Ceridwen Dovey
8. Judy Budnitz
9. Leanne Shapton
10. Nicole Krauss
11. Nell Freudenberger
12. Marisha Pessl
13. Curtis Sittenfeld
14. Jhumpa Lahiri
15. Selah Saterstrom
16. Rivka Galchen
17. Lydia Peelle
18. Rachel Cusk
19. Zadie Smith
20. Ann Patchett

There are a few ladies over 40, but really: who cares? As William but it best in the comments: "40 is a pretty tough number though. Everybody loves a phenom (for the first 10 minutes at least) but by and large the rule of 10 hits novelists just like anyone else." For the record, Virginia Woolf didn't publish her first novel, The Voyage Out, until she was 33; it had been a work in progress for nine years.

Got Women?

Virginia, HELP.

On Wednesday night, my friend Trish asked me who were my favorite contemporary female writers. I named one in particular: Sarah Manguso. If you haven't read her memoir, The Two Kinds of Decay, please do so immediately. But what about novelists? Fiction writers? Trish asked. Oh, I thought - well, Mary Gaitskill: Veronica. Well, Trish said, yes, but who else? And younger? I was stumped, and upset.

So who are your favorite*

• Female
• Contemporary
  
• Novelists
• Under 40

*favorite meaning you are a fan of their work(s)

Later, I came up with Zadie Smith. That was it. Is it just me or is there a massive black hole in fiction? Where are the young female novelists? Do they exist? Are they having trouble getting published? Is it just that women are all writing non-fiction pseudo memoirs right now? What the hell is going on? Please leave some names in the comments and prove me wrong!

Summer Reading

It's practically May, and you know what that means: it's practically summer. Time for long lazy afternoons in the park, reading in the sun. I've been running around (out of town) but I'm looking forward to the summer months when I can finally get some reading done. Here are a few books I'm excited about reading:

Miss Lonelyhearts (and The Day of the Locust) by Nathanael West
An Education, A Memoir by Lynn Barber (the basis for the film)
A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg (author of food blog Orangette)
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Summer Cooking by Elizabeth David
Memento Mori by Muriel Spark
and, if I like that, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
and if I like both of those, the new biography of Madame Spark
Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin

I've been doing a lot of food writing and reading over the past month. I hope to have something up for you all to read about the genre very soon. I just finished Judith Moore's collection of personal essays on the intersection of life and food, Never Eat Your Heart Out. It was fantastic; I highly, highly recommend it. (It's out of print but you can find it without a problem on aLibris)

I also do a fair amount of re-reading in the summer. My favorites:

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
The Unabridged Diaries of Sylvia Plath
Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan
Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Come to think of it, I pretty much re-read these books all year.

What are your summer reads and recommendations?

J.D. Salinger is dead

This morning it snowed, and with the afternoon came the news that J.D. Salinger had died.

Now, let's be honest with ourselves. Those of us who really love Salinger don't love him for The Catcher in the Rye. We love him for his masterpiece: Franny and Zooey. If you don't understand that sentence, then please read this fantastic essay by Janet Malcolm.

Salinger was old. He was 91 and had sequestered himself off from public life, moving out to a secluded house in New Hampshire thirty years ago. It's no great tragedy or surprise that he's dead. But I will miss knowing he's there, just camped out in his house.

I love Franny and Zooey with all my heart. I don't love it openly, although I have listed the book on my facebook for nearly three years. My love affair with Franny and Zooey is not a public affair because people tend to shoot Salinger down for being too pretentious, too self-referential, too-white, too-something. I don't care; I'm white, and the problems presented in Franny and Zooey may be first world problems. This argument seems flawed. I don't read novels because of what "world" they belong to. I read them because they're good.

Salinger, to me, is one of the greatest masters of dialogue. When I listen to Zooey and his mom argue in the bathroom, it's like overhearing a real conversation. I can literally smell the cigarette smoke. The humor and sarcasm of these voices is exhilarating. I like to read Nine Stories on the train and when I'm forced to get out of the subway I'm always caught with a lump in my throat from needing to laugh and to cry at the same time.

I am constantly moved by the situation in Franny and Zooey because it reminds me of the way my brother and I interact, how we share tragedies by being related and attempt to buffer it off each other, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing. While I haven't called Nicholas from another room pretending to be another sibling (that would be hard because it's only the two of us) I have called him, e-mailed him, and made gestures that siblings make in order to tell one's brother: I'm here, and I was there, I've been through it too, we're in this together.

And yes, like Eli Cash wants to be a Tenenbaum I think we all secretly want to be part of the Glass family, whether we admit it or not: part of their intelligence, their sheer obnoxiousness, their wealth, their neurotic quirks . . . the list goes on. Reading Franny and Zooey in Georgia I thought, oh what caricatures these people are. Upon moving to New York I realized they are anything but caricatures. People like this exist. I interact with them every day.

Salinger's ex-girlfriend said she knew of two unpublished novels he kept under lock and key, and a reporter who somehow managed to gain access to his house a long time ago wrote that there was an entire room filled with manuscripts. Salinger, as we all know, was notoriously private and hadn't published anything since 1965. God knows what might come out of that house - and who knows if anyone will be able to secure the rights to publish it.

When I need to get off my ass I turn to Franny and Zooey. Zooey's speech to Franny about the Fat Lady is a little heavy-handed, but all in all I pretty much agree with almost everything he says. And while Salinger's work may have been about the wages of alienation, he ended up creating some pretty incredible characters that lots of people relate to. No wonder he was so freaked-out and had to retreat to the woods. I think everyone's a little phony; it's unavoidable (and some, certainly, more than others). Whatever. These books, they jump and glisten, they're alive, and incredibly entertaining to read. I never get tired of them.

So cheers, Salinger.
You may have not liked us but we sure liked you.

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned

I wrote a review of Wells Tower's Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, which is a debut collection of short fiction. Have a look, it's over at Identity Theory, a wonderful site for fiction, poetry, and interviews. Thanks!

Kissing Dead Girls

Ladies and Ghouls, I'm pleased to announce my new column on the paranormal appearing monthly on Bookslut, a "Ladies' Night in the X-Files," if you will. The first piece is on Stephenie Meyer's first installation of the Twilight series. I hope you enjoy it, and I'd love to know what you think!

Also: RIP to the King of Pop.

CANDOR

Dear Readers,

Today I launched an online literary journal called CANDOR.

Our aim is to create a space where women can spar with text and culture.

The theme for our first issue is SURVIVAL.

Call for submissions begins now, and closes June 1st. If you're interested, I hope you'll submit!

I Wish I Had a Sylvia Plath

Gawker tagged this interview with Ryan Adams for Shelf Awareness. For those of you who don't know, he's written a book! It's called Infinity Blues. I've got to get my hands on a copy. Here's Ryan's interview below, followed by my answers!

Book Brahmin: Ryan Adams

My name is Ryan Adams. I am going deaf from Ménière's Disease. I am 34. I am a recovering drunk and amphetamine addict. I am a visual artist first, a writer second, and I bang on guitars to sell my poetry to the dulled masses. I love, love, love donuts, skateboarding, my girlfriend, our dog, sunshine, Los Angeles, reading and daydreaming. I used to live in New York City for a long time. I fought like hell for the city when people left for Brooklyn and dumped every penny I could into the mission and the museums. I got shat on by the New York Times for long enough so I moved. I will always love David Letterman and 2nd Ave Deli forever. Akashic Books has just published my collection of non-music pieces, Infinity Blues.

On your nightstand now:

Cup of coffee, digital shitty hotel clock, broken channel changer holding up computer cable into wall socket and Reading & Writing Chinese: Traditional Character Edition by William McNaughton and Li Yang.

Favorite book when you were a child:

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, Light in August by William Faulkner.

Your top five authors:

Edward Estlin Cummings, Henry Miller, W. H. Auden, Sylvia Plath and Anne Frank.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Paul Auster's New York Trilogy.

Book that changed your life:

Roget's Thesaurus.

Favorite line from a book:

"Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos."--Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

The Bell Jar.

Why you write:

It feels like the noble thing to do in a world of fake smiles, cowards and so, so many undocumented miracles if standing in the middle of parking lots and laughing for no reason was one. And to see how many times I can get away with the word unicorn in otherwise unsettled text. And vanity. Vanity. Vanity.

***

Book Junkie: Jessica

My name is Jessica. I am 23. I am a recovering shoe and tote bag addict. I am a performer first, a writer second, and I'd probably be a florist in some other life. I love, love, love french bulldogs and pugs, clothes, my boyfriend, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, spring, New York, reading and restaurant-ing. I used to live in Georgia for a long time. I still love the South and wax nostalgic, but mainly I just miss my family. I worked in publishing for a while until I got dumped. I will always love book parties and the New Yorker forever. I hope someday to publish a book of essays, the most unpublishable kind of book, ever.

On your nightstand now:

Glass of water, my journal, The Diaries of Louise Bourgeois, The Complete Unabridged Diaries of Sylvia Plath, The Complete Poems of Robert Lowell, and Brad Gooch's biography of Flannery O'Connor.

Favorite book when you were a child:

The Scarlett Letter. Young Young: Slightly Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

Your top five authors:

Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, J.D. Salinger, Vladimir Nabokov, and William Styron.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Ha! Paul Auster's Collected Prose.

Book that changed your life:

To the Lighthouse.

Favorite line from a book:

"Life; London, this moment of June." - Mrs. Dalloway

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Franny and Zooey.

Why you write:

Writing I think is the ultimate test for the brain. I write nonfiction, so I'm always trying to hone in on getting my point across and being as concise as possible while introducing some artistry and creativity into the idea. I find it challenging, and I like a challenge.

Are you a bookslut?

If you're a bookslut in need of something to read, I highly recommend Leanne Shapton's faux auction catalog, Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, including Street Fashion and Jewlery. Through the lot descriptions Leanne tells the story of the four-year failed realtionship between Hal and Lenore. The book is subtle, heartbreaking, and smart. And it's just been optioned by Brad Pitt, for a movie version starring himself and Natalie Portman. I was lucky enough to interview Leanne for Bookslut, a fantastic site dedicated to interviews, reviews, and features on literature . . . read our conversation here.


Bookslut was also kind enough to run my review of Molly Haskell's book on Gone with the Wind, Frankly My Dear, which was really a pleasure to read . . . Haskell gives a refreshing break-down of Scarlett's character and makes a convincing argument for the staying power of the film, even in the face of its less than savory presentation of slavery. Haskell really hones in on the gender studies and sexual politics of the film . . . a must-read if you're interested in the intersection of cinema and zeitgeist.

Thanks to Bookslut, and Happy Reading!

Twins. Hot.

Kudos to Rebecca Mead for her profile of the Dickman twins in this week's New Yorker. Matthew and Michael Dickman are identical twins, and they're both poets. I hadn't realized I had read one of Matthew's poems, Trouble, earlier in the magazine, and liked it very much. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to be an identical twin, for one thing, on top of trying to make it in the same profession as your sibling. This piece has some really interesting moments, however. I'm going to list them below.

1. They like Sylvia Plath.
2. Apparently Matthew is quite the ladies man, and yet:
3. Has kissed Allen Ginsberg for "fifteen minutes."
4. Both are related to Sharon Olds.
5. Both appeared as the twin boy "pre-cogs" in Minority Report.

Like, what?

Here's an awesome moment: Michael describing working on Minority Report.

"Whenever we weren't actually shooting, we would be in our trailers, reading Ted Hughes, and then we would leave and take cabs to bookstores and spend our per diem on poetry. On our days off, we would make coffee in one of our hotel rooms and write poetry all day."