Archive for category: Books

Claire Berlinski pulls rug out    (2010.12.24)

Claire Berlinski demolishes not only the sanctimony of the entire exercise of best-book-of-the-year lists but the undead premise of the entire publishing industry

Millionaire celebrity author puts out ‘tip jar’    (2010.12.17)

A-list humorist David Sedaris, who used to live in the south of France, used to put out a “tip jar” that raked in four grand

‘Mad Men Unbuttoned’: Sometimes blogs should stay blogs    (2010.12.08)

Natasha Vargas-Cooper’s Mad Men Unbuttoned worked better as postings on the Awl

The crisis in book design (for once, averted)    (2010.12.03)

I have the scoop on the design of the Giller-winning Sentimentalists. Also: Family Compact publishers, could you go fuck yourselves?

Bret Easton Ellis, pink marshmallow    (2010.10.10)

‘And since there had been a serial killer in of all fucking places Toronto, for Christ’s sake, who had read the book and based to of his murders on scenes from it, I made a number of frantic, drunken phone calls’

Half-fulfilled promises of ‘Half Empty’    (2010.10.08)

Is David Rakoff’s Half Empty an attempt at autobiography? Then why is it a failed attempt?

‘Do you realize there’s no extant photograph of him?’    (2010.09.03)

“ ‘Why is that?’ I asked. ‘Why is it like this?’ ‘It’s because we’re queer, my dear’ ”

Publishers as Flashturbators    (2010.08.31)

The Web is old enough that history can repeat itself. What’s happening now with E-books parallels what happened with Web sites in the early Aughties