Tuesday’s Links

  • I shouldn’t be shocked that Nicole Richie’s new book (I am more shocked with the fact that she’s even written one) has gotten some attention on the web that past week. And now the NYT has a huge article on her:

    “She’s the most amazing person I’ve ever seen on TV in my life,” gushed one teenage girl, who was near tears. “I live for her. I’d do anything to talk to her.”

    She wasn’t the only one living for Ms. Richie that evening. A teenage boy, wearing lip gloss and a hint of mascara, walked away from the table hyperventilating as he clutched an autographed copy of “Diamonds” close to his chest. “Oh … my … God,” he said between deep breaths. “Nicole just said I was cool! Nicole just said I was cool!” And so it went for nearly two hours, Ms. Richie scribbling her signature and sprinkling happy dust while unabashedly giddy fans fawned all over her.

    Uhm, yeah.

  • One of my favorite blog people Ed has a new edition of his podcast The Bat Segundo Show available for your listening pleasure. This edition features Lizzie Skurnick and Wendy Lesser.
  • Sherman Alexie wrote a letter to the editors of Harper’s in response to Ben Marcus’ article from last month’s issue “Why Experimental Fiction Threatens to Destroy Publishing, Jonathan Franzen, and Life as We Know It“. I’ll quote the letter which I saw at Laila’s, which she saw at Maud’s who saw it elsewhere (I actually have the new issue of Harper’s at home. I just haven’t gotten to it yet as I am still 3 weeks behind in New Yorkers. It never ends):

    Does Ben Marcus, educated at NYU and Brown, employed by Columbia, and published by Anchor, Vintage, and Harper�s, truly believe that he is an excluded experimentalist? Does he honestly believe that Jonathan Franzen, educated at Swarthmore, once employed by Harvard, and published by FSG and Harper�s, is somehow more elitist? Or is Franzen the populist? Or is a populist elitist? Is there really much difference between Marcus and Franzen? This East Coast – East Coast Literary Rap War reminds me of the Far Side cartoon in which a lone penguin, suffering in a crowd of millions of exactly similar penguins, rises and shouts, “I just have to be me!”

    Sherman Alexie
    Seattle, Wash.
    Purple Monkey Banana

    (You know, like the telephone game?)

3 thoughts on “Tuesday’s Links”

  3. Christopher Willard

    The Franzen diatribe is getting a lot of press – I’ll take a position via analogy… I just spent a couple days going through the galleries in Chelsea, it’s the most conservative I’ve seen them as a group in years, sad to say. Maybe fiction is heading in that direction and Franzen is picking up on the swing of the pendulum?

    Like

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