June 28, 2012 On the Shelf Good-bye, Friends; Hello, Technology! By The Paris Review Au revoir, Village Voice bookstore! You will be missed! Slow readers, listen up: a new app tells you exactly how long it will take to finish a book. Library patrons can now not only borrow but publish books. The best Nora Ephron bookstore moments. Meet “The Stressful Life of Salman Rushdie and Implementation of His Verdict,” a new Iranian video game. [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]
June 20, 2012 On the Shelf A Tsunami of Pages, #OccupyGaddis By The Paris Review Guy Laramee’s paper landscapes. A cultural news roundup. Want to know the books Whitey Bulger would have taken to the grave? Paper landscapes, a tsunami of pages—this is extreme editing. Be Kind to Books Club. Some propaganda never gets old. Self-promotion knows no boundaries. “You can’t turn Infinite Jest into a two-hour play. You can’t put it on a conventional stage. And you can’t send your audience away without at least a small dose of pain.” A giant squid invades Paris in Fiona Apple’s new music video. R.I.P. Gitta Sereny. The conspiracy is alive: find a Thomas Pynchon “Trystero” near you. Twilight is not an acceptable nomination. Paging Jonathan Franzen. #OccupyGaddis begins now! Flannery O’Connor reads “A Good Man is Hard to Find” in a rare 1959 recording. What happens when you leave a group of boys around art? The sculptor Eva Rothschild finds out.
June 15, 2012 On the Shelf Perfume, Pikes, and Parsing By The Paris Review HBO has apologized for allowing Game of Thrones to display a decapitated head that bears a striking resemblance to President George W. Bush. Penning Perfumes: when words make scents. Choose your Highsmith. The OED: Not infallible? The dialectics of Twitter. Color me royal: what’s on our art editor’s bookshelf.
June 14, 2012 On the Shelf Translating, Restoring, Interring By The Paris Review The long, strange history of Dorothy Parker’s ashes. Translating Emily Dickinson (into modern English). Thomas Pynchon (finally) allows his books to be sold digitally. At the newly launched the Slant, Erica Jong talks … well, everything. The Arizona Department of Transportation turns to haiku for their latest dust-storm PSAs. Hemingway’s Oak Park childhood home has been purchased. The new owners say they plan a Hemingway-esque restoration.
June 13, 2012 On the Shelf 50 Shades of Wednesday By The Paris Review Familiar-looking cover art. Bret Easton Ellis wants you to know he is not joking about his desire to adapt 50 Shades of Grey for the screen. (Someone’s already called dibs on lingerie.) How said screenplay might read. Speaking of NSFW: Can you, like Martin Amis, tell which sex wrote which sex scene? Jennifer Benka is the new executive director of the Academy of American Poets. A Ray Bradbury Museum? Maybe … Speaking of, childhood homes of twenty famous authors.
June 12, 2012 On the Shelf Salinger Foods, Austen Portraits By The Paris Review Does this painting portray Jane Austen at thirteen? The Stephen King–universe flowchart. Gertrude Stein: fact and fiction. Regina Spektor likes J.D. Salinger. Holden Caulfield’s cheese sandwich and other literary dishes.