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September 30, 2009
Shorties (Douglas Coupland, Broken Bells, and more)
Financial Times reviews Douglas Coupland's latest novel, Generation A.
Generation A is not in the first order of Coupland’s work, yet it shows why he is one of the most popular serious writers of our time. It gathers its nervous energy from issues such as the manipulation of food and drugs, the globalisation of the economy and the daily workplace tensions that prick all our lives yet rarely feature in literary fiction.
James Mercer of the Shins and DJ Danger Mouse have formed a new band, Broken Bells, and will release their debut album in 2010.
The Rumpus interviews Tao Lin about his new novella, Shoplifting from American Apparel.
Rumpus: Would you call yourself a “K-Mart Realist”?
Tao Lin: In certain situations, for extraliterary reasons and in a to-some-degree ironic tone, I might. But in terms of my writing I don’t think I would, because I don’t really enjoy grouping writers together except sarcastically or to say something about journalism or the media. I honestly view the works of Frederick Barthelme and Joy Williams and Ann Beattie and Mary Robison and Bobbie Ann Mason and Raymond Carver as distinct and separate from one another. I honestly feel that if you showed me a new short story by each of those writers I would be able to tell you which writer wrote it (except maybe Carver, though still I would be able to deduce the answer by canceling out the other writers probably).
Sloan is offering an mp3 download of a new song if you sign up for the band's mailing list.
At HTMLGIANT, Michael Schaub (in one of the year's funniest litblog posts) examines the current odds for the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature.
Stream SCORE! 20 Years of Merge Records: THE REMIXES in its entirety.
Paste interviews Jake Duzsik of HEALTH.
At her blog, Amanda Palmer explains "ehy I am not afraid to take your money."
On sale for $1.99 at Amazon MP3: Damien Rice's 11-track Live at Fingerprints: Warts and All album
Going to the Austin City Limits Music Festival? Download the iPhone app to keep up with the schedule.
Exclaim! interviews author Frank Portman about his new novel, Andromeda Klein.
Do you take pride in introducing a lot of younger kids like that to cool bands through your writing?
I get a lot of feedback from kids who had never heard the Kinks before they read King Dork. The Kinks are surprising to me, but I guess I'm not surprised that contemporary kids don't know about the Sweet and Slade and other rock of that era. When you dig back into it, as I found when I was revisiting it when I was writing the book, that's some great stuff. And any occasion to present it in a new package… That's not the reason I wrote the book, and it's not the only thing going on in the book, but it's a cool aspect of it, and it's one way that people can appreciate what's going on in the book.
The Utne Reader shares an mp3 music sampler.
Audrey Niffenegger talks to All Things Considered about her new novel, Her Fearful Symmetry, and shares an excerpt.
The Arctic Monkeys visit The Current studio for an interview and a live performance.
Pop Tarts Suck Toasted is counting down the top 100 albums of the decade.
The inaugural New Noise Santa Barbara music conference will be held October 8-10.
Win 5 books from Snare Books in this week's Largehearted Boy contest.
Follow me on Twitter for links that don't make the daily "Shorties" columns.
also at Largehearted Boy:
daily mp3 downloads
Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and full album streams from this week's CD releases)
weekly music & DVD release lists
tags: music books popculture indie
