I recently read Franzen’s article “Farther Away” in the April 18th New Yorker, in which he chronicles his trip to a remote, volcanic island off the coast of Chile, near the place where the novel, Robinson Crusoe, is set. As he relates the events of his battles with the elements, he discusses the history of the novel form, his relationship to the late David Foster Wallace, and offers some thoughts on boredom, which when smashed together end up having some odd implications.

Franzen getting in touch with his inner Robinson Crusoe

In the article, Franzen claims that Robinson Crusoe is generally considered to be the first English novel. This worried me because I spent an entire week in my undergraduate British literature class dissecting the arguments for and against this claim. There are some who believe that, because the novel does not have an antagonist, the honor actually belongs to Daniel Defoe’s next book, Moll Flanders. Personally, I agree that Crusoe is indeed a novel, so I ignored my impulse to write in to The New Yorker with the correction—mostly because I didn’t want them to know that I’m still reading issues from April.

Franzen continues to discuss the origins of the novel, citing critic Ian Watt’s claim that the novel rose from the ashes of boredom (similar to the boredom felt by Mr. Franzen during the promotion of his latest book). I could tell you that the word novel actually means new, but we’ve all heard that a thousand times and it doesn’t actually mean anything. The actual difference between an Arthurian Romance, like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Don Quixote is that the former is based on mythology and established tales while the latter is, in effect, an invention. Hence, the novel is the cure for a broad, cultural boredom with traditional stories. (This arguments starts to slip, however, if you ask pesky questions like, How could the novel be devoid of influence? So I will refrain.)

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birds were hip before you even knew: logos from the 1960s & 70s.

listen to a full stream of andrew bird’s new release: the norman soundtrack.

jonathan franzen maybe talks a little shit about dfw’s nonfiction.

dean wareham interviews stephen malkmus.

what does music do to your brain?  “humans are hard-wired to respond” to it.

guess what?  your brain doesn’t like bad stuff.

steve almond looks at the occupy wall street movement and reflects on his father’s civil protests decades ago.

a writer on the millions sees a modern day bartleby the scrivener in occupy wall street.

i recently started doing some web work for the lit pub, which basically gives you daily personal essays for books you should read (and sometimes music recommendations you might like related to those books).  htmlgiant interviewed founder molly gaudry when it launched this summer.  sam ligon, of bark and willow springs fame, already has an essay up there on kamby bolongo mean river.

you can let robots choose books for you at booklamp.org, which describes itself as pandora for books.

i can never tell any of the beastie boys apart.

Wow, did I get in trouble for starting that tradition while a grad student. It requires little in the way of creativity to imagine the indignant response from certain female feminists upon hearing a group of guys dared to drink whiskey together and not included or invite any women.  Shit-storm is too strong a word.  Shit-sprinkle feels appropriate.

This is my playful defense.  And functions as part-two in my new series on the modern male friendship.

Whiskey-no-Women, or Whiskey Night (a less gender-divisive term, though lacking alliterative qualities) began a two years before I left for grad school in New York City.  I lived near Columbia University, taught 40 plus hours of tennis each week, didn’t write nearly enough, but drank plenty, and had a best friend at film school at Columbia. Basically, I was that “oh yeah what’s his name-guy” who was always at grad school parties.

One night, Bob, his good friend Christian (who was quickly becoming my good friend as well) came over with a bottle of Jameson and we drank it.  Not all of it. (Jesus, I’m only half-Irish.)  But we drank a lot.  And someone coined the name Whiskey-no-Women, which was funny in an Alanis Morissette ironic sense, because after a few hours, all we wanted to do was talk to women. Read more »

some day my home will be plastered with posters as awesome as this.

i heart the library of congress.  these WPA posters are just one reason why.

holy shit, dfw fans—someone made a poor yorick entertainment website (a.k.a. proof that there are people in the world more obsessed with infinite jest than me).  revel in all that is the totally fictional filmography of the totally fictional mad stork.

national geographic has dug up declassified photos from area 51.

those “great ideas” book covers that i love/covet oh so very much?  you can see all 100 of them on penguin’s site.

holy shit, cloud atlas fans—the wachowski brothers (the guys responsible for the matrix films) are making a film adaptation, with hugo weaving starring in multiple roles.

there are now awards, complete with their own fancy ceremony (“formal wear suggested”), for book trailers.  the event was yesterday, the trailers are all linked to here.

not to be outdone by marvel, which seems intent on “rebooting” their biggest movie franchises (e.g., x-men and spider-man), dc comics is going to restart ALL of their comics with issue 1 later this year.

science can now delete your totally bummer memories.  from your brain.  wtf.

i haven’t seen marwencol, but the still from htmlgiant’s post reviewing the documentary (about a man whose memory and motor skills were destroyed) makes me want to watch it immediately.

i heart david foster wallace as much as the next bespectacled white boy, but do we really need to read his undergraduate philosophy thesis?  survey says… yes (apparently). columbia university press has even launched a new website in conjunction with the forthcoming publication of fate, time, and language: an essay on free will and the spinning of wallace’s corpse in his grave.  bonus dfw links: michael pietsch’s editor letter to wallace re: infinite jest, and “deleted scenes” from that massive book.

google’s gonna sell you books.  because they don’t have enough money or market share or street cred yet. and never, ever, will.

starting in january, the missouri review will host the best of their archives on the interwebs as part of  something called textBOX.

claudia gonson, of the magnetic fields, blogs about her reading life.

to all the graduates (especially all those brilliant writers of the eastern washington u. mfa program): first off, congratulations.  secondly: i’m sorry, you’ve got a shit job market waiting to welcome you to the real world.  you’re gonna go through interviews and get asked absurd questions that (maybe) were relevant to your parents’ generation, like “where do you see yourself in five years?”  to which you should answer with the equally absurd mitchhedbergian response, “i will be celebrating the 5th anniversary of you asking me this question.”

to everyone else: here’s some links to the kinds of interview that don’t suck.

dave eggers “interviews” david foster wallace for the believer in 2003.

part one of a Q&A with studs terkel, from stop smiling (a.k.a. the best interview publication you’ve probably never heard of).

the morning news talks to david remnick, the new yorker editor & author of the bridge

bookslut gets it on with wells tower.

in an old-timey video clip, aldous huxley gets scary prescient about the conflux of advertising & democracy.

and, finally, it’s not technically an interview, but this esquire profile of sinatra by gay talese is kind of legendary. and awesome.

go get ‘em, grads.

A couple of months ago I expressed interest in Barry Hannah to a friend, wondering where to start (the consensus seems to be Airships), and he said, “I like him because he’s got a real fuck-you tone, as opposed to the abundant, tender, pinched-sphincter tone most writers these days have.” Exactly. Read more »