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Carnival by Rawi Hage “In the vein of Scorsese’s Taxi...

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 13:00:00 -0400

Carnival by Rawi Hage

“In the vein of Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and HBO’s Taxicab Confessions…the novel’s short scenes of decadence and desperation spray across the pages like buckshot—loud and scattered, but still penetrating.” —Time Out New York

We’ve been scattering some of our favorite Carnival quotes on Tumblr over the past couple of weeks. This review from Time Out New York might help put them in context.

Tweets from Inside the Whitey Bulger Trial Kevin Cullen...

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 10:29:08 -0400

Tweets from Inside the Whitey Bulger Trial

Kevin Cullen (@GlobeCullen) and Shelley Murphy (@shelleymurph), Boston Globe reporters and co-authors of the New York Times bestselling book Whitey Bulger, are live-tweeting the Bulger trial from inside the courtroom in Boston.

The Romance of Train Stations

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 15:13:30 -0400

The Romance of Train Stations:

“If the whole of railway technology, the whole cultural and architectural heritage that is the Italian rail station, had been designed on purpose to maximize the emotional drama of return from afar, it could not have been done better.”

Tim Parks, author of Italian Ways, ruminates on why train stations are the ideal scenario for greetings and farewells.

therumpus: Here’s today’s Daily GIF! We can’t wait for...

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 12:13:15 -0400

therumpus:

Here’s today’s Daily GIF!

We can’t wait for all the Neil deGrasse Tyson gifs that will surely result from his update of Carl Sagan’s ‘Cosmos’ on Fox in 2014.

Trains, the First Symbol of the Networked World Ever since the...

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 11:44:12 -0400

Trains, the First Symbol of the Networked World

Ever since the mid-nineteenth century, when the laying of train lines went hand in hand with the introduction of the telegraph, railway stations have offered the most up-to-date communications services. They marked the beginning of the world perceived as network. You could send and receive messages through a grid, as it were, like lines on a map, without actually touching the ground anymore, as the train passes over the landscape on its rails without ever really touching anything else. It was a more mental world, more mentally busy and fragmented than the old landscape where a physical message had to be carried on hooves or cart wheels.

—Tim Parks, from Italian Ways: On and Off the Rails from Milan to Palermo

(Photo by refresher_towels on Flickr)

The Scott Eder Gallery in Dumbo, Brooklyn presents “Will...

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:30:20 -0400

The Scott Eder Gallery in Dumbo, Brooklyn presents “Will Eisner: A Contract with God and Other Images.”

Don’t miss the opening reception on June 14th.

The Super Ever had to do battle with the super of your apartment...

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 14:49:39 -0400

The Super

Ever had to do battle with the super of your apartment building? If so, you will appreciate this scene from Rawi Hage’s new novel Carnival:

When I leave the janitor a letter, I make the situation sound urgent, with apocalyptic consequences. I write in a poetic, wrathful, religious style with a hint of menace to his own well-being and to the collective welfare. I try to explain to him that everything is interconnected. Even a small, innocent leak of air from a window can tip the balance of warmth in a building and lead to microcosms of small global infernos. I remind him that our nature is a fragile one.

Like I said, he is an ignoramus and he never get the humour of my literary, sardonic style. His speed machine has made him lose all interest in history and humankind.

But, nevertheless, he ends up by appearing at my door waving my letters in his hand: What exactly is wrong here? You are not a little girl and should not be afraid of spiders. And what do you mean by the words juridical rivers of blood…welfare and warfare…licit and explicit…Are you trying to scare me by using big words? I ran your letter by a lawyer, pal. I say you better be careful what you write, because my lawyer can drive you up against the wall. If you keep threatening me and writing letters in red ink with “buccaneer flags”…I might have to double the rent or kick you out altogether. I don’t have time for this! And your apartment is cluttered with books and papers, and that, my friend, brings all kinds of insects and rodents. So you might as well make peace with me and accept the spiders as pest control. And now, where is that flood you wrote about…and who is this Mr. Moses, is he staying with you here…?

Flavorwire calls Carnival a Must-Read Book for June and The Daily Beast, even more urgently, dubs it a Hot Read this week. We say, read it today.

bookandbeer: Book: The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by...

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 12:34:00 -0400

bookandbeer:

Book: The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt

Beer: Hitachino Nest Ancient Nipponia

Ommegang’s Three Philosophers might also be nice.

"In every aspect of Italian life, one of the key characteristics to get to grips with is that this is..."

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 09:50:03 -0400

“In every aspect of Italian life, one of the key characteristics to get to grips with is that this is a nation at ease with the distance between ideal and real. They are beyond what we call hypocrisy. Quite simply they do not register the contradiction between rhetoric and behavior. It’s an enviable mind-set.”

- Tim Parks, from Italian Ways: On and Off the Rails from Milan to Palermo

Poor? No

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 20:24:00 -0400

Jacob Bacharach:

To me, the most interesting reaction to the recent Guardian/Glenn Greenwald reporting on the US Government’s vast, creepy, and stupid engagement in various programs of indiscriminate eavesdropping is the shock and disbelief evinced by, mostly, partisan defenders of the President to the effect that there is something deeply disturbing and unbelievable about the idea that a “high-school dropout” could have advanced, succeeded, and come into a six figure salary. Nevermind that the technology industries have always valorized the dropout narrative and that there are prominent tech billionaires offering substantial grants to kids who skip college in order to do something useful with their lives. I’m reminded of some educational activists who point out that in the eyes of the New York Timeset al., $250,000 a year is too poor to live in Manhattan, but a teacher making fifty grand is an entitled sinecure living high on the hog. The point is … no, the question is: is $200,000 a lot of money to make in a year? Well, in the eyes of the professional classes and their media interlocutors, the answer is: no, if you’re the right kind of person; yes, if you’re not.

Read it all.

nprfreshair: Mark Gerchick, author of Full Upright and Locked...

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 15:33:03 -0400

nprfreshair:

Mark Gerchick, author of Full Upright and Locked Position, on the plight of leg room aboard commercial aircraft:

Back in the old days, probably 20 years ago, the tendency was to have about 34 inches. … Now the standard is about 31 inches in the United States. … Some of the low-cost airlines have tightened that up to about 28 inches, which is now approaching the limits of anatomical possibility.

After you listen to Mark Gerchick, an aviation consultant, on NPR, read what he has to say about the air we breathe while flying on Medium.com.

What We Breathe When We Fly

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 12:08:00 -0400

What We Breathe When We Fly:

From toxic fumes to pesticides, learn the facts about the air we breathe while flying from Mark Gerchick, an aviation consultant and author of Full Upright and Locked Position: Not-So-Comfortable Truths about Air Travel Today.

“It’s not a book about Italy seen from train...

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 11:17:41 -0400

“It’s not a book about Italy seen from train windows. Not a travel book. And it’s not a book about trains as such. Let’s just say I’m writing about the way trains sort of happen in Italy. Or don’t happen.”

—Tim Parks, Italian Ways is in stores now and it’s delightful.

"Everything about her seems to be saying, Listen, if you don’t look attentively, if you..."

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 11:39:00 -0400

“Everything about her seems to be saying, Listen, if you don’t look attentively, if you don’t go beyond my simplicity to detect the simmering volcano in me, you are not it.”

- Rawi Hage, Carnival

NOOK Snaps, a series of original, digital-only short stories...

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 10:43:31 -0400

NOOK Snaps, a series of original, digital-only short stories from Barnes & Noble, launches with a new story by Michael Dahlie, winner of the PEN/Hemingway award and author of the novels The Best of Youth and A Gentleman’s Guide to Graceful Living.

In true Dahlie fashion, The Insurrectionist is a comedy of manners about a bumbling, insecure, but nevertheless endearing, American businessman in London.

Richard Russo has observed that Michael Dahlie, “writes the way Cary Grants used to act, that is, with a seeming effortlessness and grace that is truly maddening to those of us who know how difficult it is.”

Chuck Palahniuk’s Official Tumblr has existed for 365...

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 09:58:00 -0400

Chuck Palahniuk’s Official Tumblr has existed for 365 days. Are you following it?

wordmeds: eat eat eat eat eat. Watch out for the parasite...

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 12:46:06 -0400

wordmeds:

eat eat eat eat eat.

Watch out for the parasite hiding inside the pages of Irvine Welsh’s novel Filth. It’s insatiable.

"Italy is not a country for beginners."

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 12:06:47 -0400

“Italy is not a country for beginners.”

- Tim Parks, from Italian Ways: On and Off the Rails from Milan to Palermo

Psychoanalysis as Literature: Stephen Grosz's "The Examined Life"

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 11:48:00 -0400

Psychoanalysis as Literature: Stephen Grosz's "The Examined Life":

A psychoanalyst distilled 25 years and 50,000 hours of therapy into a slim volume, filled with details and moments worthy of the masters of fiction.

Lucy Scholes reviews The Examined Life for The Daily Beast.

"Man’s laws are self-serving, nature’s laws are arbitrary, and God’s laws, I..."

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 10:30:19 -0400

“Man’s laws are self-serving, nature’s laws are arbitrary, and God’s laws, I proclaimed, are in need of some serious updates.”

- Fly, the taxi-driving, book-collecting, narrator/protagonist of Rawi Hage’s novel Carnival