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January 24, 2013
Shorties (Robert Morgan on Writing Fiction and Poetry, Music Producers Interview Radiohead's Thom Yorke, and more)
The Oxford American interviews author Robert Morgan.
W. W.: Did your experience as a poet help you as a fiction writer?
R.M.: I'm not sure I would ever have been able to write prose fiction if I had not spent those years from 1964 to 1980 working primarily on poetry. It was writing poetry that taught me about economy, precision, compression of language. It was poetry that taught me to listen to words and phrases and sentences. Writing poetry gave me the confidence to try to write prose. As I said before, poetry is the essential verbal art. All other writing derives from it. What poetry did not do was teach me to think like a storyteller. For that I had to go back to the voices and narratives of my childhood, especially the women of my childhood, who relished telling of terrible things, scandals, awful storms, the pains of childbirth, the stubbornness of men, snake bites, things that happened a long time ago.
Dazed and Confuzed interviews Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, with questions from innovative music producers.
The Largehearted Boy books of the year:
my favorite graphic novels of 2012
my favorite nonfiction books of 2012
my favorite novels of 2012
my favorite short story collections of 2012
DIY examines how one Brooklyn high school student duped many websites into reporting the title and tracklist of a non-existent Vampire Weekend album.
Thomas Calabrese, a graduate student in Brooklyn, was, along with the rest of his class, given a lemon by his tutor, told to photograph it, post it on Facebook, and whoever got the most 'likes' would win. His idea, by anyone's standards, was a little bit brilliant.
Stereogum reports that the band The Mars Volta has broken up.
KCRW's Bookworm interviews poet Ange Mlinko.
Flavorwire lists the wackiest conspiracy theories from the world of music.
Fred Kaplan talks to Morning Edition about his new book, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War.
Sleigh Bells guitarist Derek Miller talks to Triple J about recording the band's third album.
Wired interviews cartoonist Gene Luen Yang about his forthcoming graphic novels.
Three of Prince's new bandamtes discuss his new song "Screwdriver" with The Current.
Zola Books interviews Nick Flynn about his new memoir The Reenactments.
Zola: The Reenactments is full of quotes, by everyone from Walt Whitman to Joan Didion to groundbreaking neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran. The book even includes an index for them. It reminded me a lot of David Shields' Reality Hunger.
NF: There's also [Jonathan] Lethem's book on influence. There’s a lot of that going on—that 'collective memory.' Whatever the culture puts out there, trying to show that in the writing. Some of the quotes I've had for a while, on my hard drive. I have folders of quotes of various types. I'm trying to show some sort of pattern—putting a quote about neuroscience next to Nietzsche.
Win three exceptional books titled "Jerusalem" (two graphic novels and a cookbook) and a $100 Threadless gift certificate in this week's Largehearted Boy contest.
Amazon MP3 offers 100 albums on sale for $5 each.
Amazon MP3 offers over 1,400 albums on sale for $3.99.
Amazon MP3
Amazon MP3 offers over 400 jazz albums on sale for $1.78.
Amazon MP3
Follow me on Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Google+, Facebook, and Stumbleupon for links (updated throughout the day) that don't make the daily "Shorties" columns.
also at Largehearted Boy:
previous Shorties posts (daily news and links from the worlds of music, books, and pop culture)
The list of online "best of 2012" book lists
The list of online "best of 2012" music lists
100 Online Sources for Free and Legal Music Downloads
Atomic Books Comics Preview (the week's best new comics & graphic novels)
Book Notes (authors create playlists for their book)
daily mp3 downloads
Largehearted Word (the week's best new books)
musician/author interviews
Note Books (musicians discuss literature)
Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and full album streams from this week's CD releases)
weekly music & DVD release lists
