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October 19, 2013
Shorties (Two Interviews with Donna Tartt, A New Biography of Charlie Parker, and more)
Donna Tartt talks to Weekend Edition about her new novel The Goldfinch.
On weighing plot against character in a novel
"If you have the right characters, the characters will take care of the plot for you. They will bring an energy to the plot, so character for me always comes first.
Of course you need to help steer them, but as a writer, you really need to — particularly when you're writing a big book — you need to leave yourself open to risk and surprise. If there's no surprise for the writer, there's no surprise for the reader. And sometimes, as you're going along, you can have everything perfectly planned out, and then just see something coming that you never ever ever saw. And I sort of think that if something like that occurs to me, six years into the writing of a book that I've been thinking about every day, the reader's really not going to see it."
The New York Times also interviews Tartt.
Weekend Edition interviews Stanley Crouch about his new book, Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker.
Under the Radar profiles the band Crocodiles.
Suzanne Rivecca points out sexism in literary criticism at Slate.
There's a predominant, gendered bias that colors the reception and interpretation of literature. Is this news to anyone? It's demonstrated repeatedly almost every time a female fiction writer puts out a book featuring sexual conflict, victimization, misanthropy and "dark" psychological states of mind. (And I'm not talking about "Gone Girl." I'm talking about literary fiction.) Does that mean such books never get praised and lauded? No. Nor does it mean they don’t also get framed in a reductive, aghast, minimizing, "let's attach a ready-made half-baked cultural explanation to account for this horror" manner that, say, Denis Johnson (whose work I love, by the way) never has to deal with.
The Telegraph shares an excerpt from Sam Knee's new book A Scene In Between: Fashion and Independent Music in the UK 1983-89.
Biographile interviews Julia Salamon about her biography of playwright Wendy Wasserstein Wendy and the Lost Boys.
The Aesthete interviews Mitchell S. Jackson about his debut novel The Residue Years.
Guided By Voices drummer Kevin Fennell is auctioning his drum kit on eBay.
Phantogram visits The Current studio for an interview and live performance.
Flavorwire lists the 10 best appearances of the devil in literature.
Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, Google+, 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)
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)
Librairie Drawn & Quarterly Books of the Week (recommended new books, magazines, and comics)
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
