Wednesday Linkstorm
Hey, check out the new Linkstorm banner. Very cool, right? My kid sister, Molly Somers, does all of our design. Thanks Molly, you're a genius.Are you going to AWP next week (heretofore referred to as Blazercon 2013)? If so, make sure to stop by the Barnstorm/UNH table at the book fair and say hello. I will be there holding down the fort, as will the rest of the Barnstorm staff, who will, I'm sure, sign up for many, many more shifts manning the table than they have currently. UNH is also hosting a reading and reception for Charles Simic's New and Selected Poems, featuring a reading by Simic, free snacks, and booze. So strap a second blazer on over your first blazer and come out. Two blazers: think about it. Room 301, level three.Another AWP suggestion: get trampled to death trying to get into the Saunders reading on Saturday morning. As good a way to go as any.Will Self's Umbrella reviewed by the Times. That's a hard book, but well worth it.There's a new Pynchon novel on the way. The Bleeding Edge will take place in "New York City, in the lull between the collapse of the dot-com boom and the terrible events of September 11." V. exciting. (sorry) Preorder for delivery by Tristero on the pub date. (sorry sorry)Big news in the world of comics: the writer of Batman confirmed that Robin is going to be killed in tomorrow's issue. By his genetic clone, obviously. This is just an excuse to talk about Batman, because I've been re-watching all the movies and they are so good. For instance, in Batman Returns, Keaton thwarts the Penguin by popping in a CD-ROM that scrambles the radio signals in Gotham, so that his dynamite-toting penguin henchmen get confused. Take that plot to your workshop and let the praise roll in.This 10th of December-inspired playlist by the Ploughshares blog is...surprising ska-heavy.What's your favorite movie about a writer? Tie between Joachim Trier's Reprise and Sunset Boulevard, because I am big. It's the pictures that got small.On Full Stop, Alex Gilvarry, author of From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant, has good answers to soft balls like this: In a rare 1983 interview the enigmatic and often dour Romanian writer Emil Cioran speaks about only reading Nietzsche's letters because he became concerned with how untruthful Nietzsche's published works seemed when read against the miserable condition of his day to day existence (isolated, weak, sickly, certainly not characterized by any sense of vigor). Is there any sense in which the truth of one's condition should be related to the truth of one's writing, even if in an oblique sense?Is this the best book cover ever? (Nope. This is.)See you at Blazercon 2013!