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August 12, 2007
Shorties
The Montreal Gazette asks three authors what author or literary character they would most like to travel with.
The Brisbane Courier-Mail profiles Bob Dylan's greatest albums.
The Toledo Blade examines the genius that is Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation album.
The Palm Beach Post points out that Del Rey will publish Michael Chabon's novel, Gentlemen of the Road (previously serialized in the New York Times).
WFMU's Beware of the Blog explores the vinyl side of Hanna-Barbera cartoons with many mp3s.
Hunter S. Thompson's widow, Anita, talks to Harp about the author's life and career.
“Hunter’s first book was Hell’s Angels, and it came out when he was 29,” she offers, by way of illustration. “He always thought that if he didn’t have a book published by the time he turned 30, the gig was up. He even went to barber school, just in case the writing thing didn’t pan out. Can you imagine Hunter as a barber? So he finally got a contract with a publisher, and he’d written half of Hell’s Angels and it was fantastic. But the deadline was in four days. So he checked into a hotel room by himself, and stayed up for four days on Wild Turkey and Dexedrine. He finished the book on time, and it was brilliant. So he used the Wild Turkey and Dexedrine as a tool.”
IGN debates who should portray the Notorious B.I.G in an upcoming biopic.
Author Chuck Palahniuk, "the guru of gruesome," talks to the Age.
"Most readers want more of what they already enjoy. The balance is to keep them happy while offering something different. All of Dickens sounds much the same. When did we get the idea that a writer has to re-invent everything with every book?"
Actor Elijah Wood talks to the Times about starting his own record label, Simian.
The label’s only criterion will be that Wood likes the music it puts out. He says he would “love to sign an English band”, but is adamant that Simian, which has no employees and no office (“Not yet”) will not be synonymous with any particular sound. “I don’t want it to be a genre-specific label,” he says. “My taste is all over the place. As a kid, the first record I ever owned was The Best of the Monkees, but my brother, Zack, who’s seven years older, was a huge Prince fan, and my mum always really loved soul music. The Beatles were huge in my developing tastes, but from the age of eight, I was travelling around so much that I was exposed to different kinds of music from different people I was working with – everything from Elvis Costello to Ween by the age of 13. Then, when I was 15 or 16, it became serious after I heard Miles Davis and Squarepusher for the first time. After that, Nirvana was hugely influential. And I was a huge Smashing Pumpkins fan, but then I realised that there were no boundaries, and my taste expanded from there – Joni Mitchell, Billie Holiday. Then I got into Delta blues, Skip James, Robert Johnson. It all expanded, and the more I heard, and still the more I hear, the more passionate I become. And the more I realise that there is still so much to discover.”
Singer-songwriter Ryan Adams talks to the Brisbane Courier Mail.
"I dream and I create because I'm a machine built to express art. This is what I made myself into being – an art cockroach. No matter what, I will find my way to the art."
Singer-songwriter Regina Spektor talks to the Telegraph.
'People are always asking me what's true in my songs,' says Spektor, who claims to have no idea where her inspiration comes from. 'They want to know what things really happened, and what's made up, and I don't really think that way. My songs are definitely linked to what's happening to me in real life, but I have no idea how and, to be honest, I'm not that interested.'
In Newsweek, author Jonathan Safran Foer lists his five most important books.
Author William Gibson talks to the Observer.
'What I grew up with as science fiction,' Gibson says, 'is now a historical category. Previous practitioners, HP Lovecraft, say, or HG Wells, had these huge, leisurely "here and nows" from which to contemplate what might happen. Wells knew exactly where he was and knew he was at the centre of things.'
That Truncheon Thing shares a classic bootleg from The Band (their 1976 appearance on the King Biscuit Flour Hour).
NPR's Weekend Edition excerpts from Irini Spanidou's new novel, Before.
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