The Best of NYC LETTERS
BEST SIGN THAT PERHAPS THE END OF THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY AS WE KNOW IT WON'T BE THE UTTER DISASTER WE'RE ALL DREADING: Electric Literature
BEST NEW WEBSITE THAT'S SURE TO MAKE MILLIONS: fiftytwostories.com
BEST INDICTMENT OF AN AMAZON CULTURE: Adrian Tomine's "Read-Handed" New Yorker Cover
BEST EXAMPLE OF A PUBLICLY DISGRACED LITERARY FIGURE GOOD-NATUREDLY TAKING THE SHIT HE HAS COMING TO HIM: James Frey's Gawker internship
MOST DEPRESSING REVELATION REGARDING THE FINANCIAL REALITIES OF MAGAZINE JOURNALISM: Dan Baum's Per Annum
BEST LITERARY FAREWELL: John Updike in the New York Times
FIVE BEST UNCONFIRMED THOMAS PYNCHON SIGHTINGS
BEST BASKETBALL LEAGUE FOR NERDS: WORD Basketball League
BEST TINY LITTLE ZINE FROM AN ARTS COLLECTIVE: Birdsong
BEST REASON FOR THE NEW YORKER TO RETURN TO THE PRACTICE OF MAKING THEIR SUMMER FICTION ISSUE THE DEBUT FICTION ISSUE: The Tiger's Wife," by Tea Obreht
BEST DICK MOVE BY A HERO TO MILLIONS: J.D. Salinger
politics media food & drink music art theater film people & places
BEST EVIDENCE THAT RELENTLESS SELF-PROMOTION CAN STILL GET YOU SOMEWHERE IN THIS TOWN. SORT OF: New York Magazine christening Tao Lin the next Lit "It Kid"
We've long been deeply irked by Lin's vacuous posturing and "I know you are but what am I" dorm-room philosophizing, and this article did nothing to change that feeling. (Some of his writing's ok, we guess.)
BEST SIGN THAT PERHAPS THE END OF THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY AS WE KNOW IT WON'T BE THE UTTER DISASTER WE'RE ALL DREADING:
Electric Literature
A thousand bucks for a short story still works out to a sweatshop-level wage when you do the math, but it's way better than what a lot of your print journals are paying. Also, you've never really read Alice Munro until you've read her on an iPhone.
BEST NEW WEBSITE THAT'S SURE TO MAKE MILLIONS: fiftytwostories.com
Every week, Cal Morgan of Harper Perennial puts up a short story. It could be any short story: old, new, classic, experimental... This doesn't seem like rocket science, but seriously people, short stories are the building blocks of our moral culture; they're how we discover things about ourselves, and about others. They are us and we are them... so we CAN'T LET THEM DIE. Go read some.
BEST INDICTMENT OF AN AMAZON CULTURE: Adrian Tomine's "Read-Handed" New Yorker Cover
Most of us are guilty of buying books from the internet, but as New Yorkers we really oughtn't — independent booksellers still dot the city, and we should be supporting those small companies (and not the Barnes and Noble behemoths either). To drive this point home, on the cover of an issue of the New Yorker last summer, the "Optic Nerve" creator illustrated a woman accepting an Amazon box from a UPS man while her neighbor unlocks the door to his bookstore. He stares at her with incredulity; she stares back mortified. Or maybe those are just the emotions we project onto it. We're sorry, we're sorry, those new releases are just so cheap!
BEST EXAMPLE OF A PUBLICLY DISGRACED LITERARY FIGURE GOOD-NATUREDLY TAKING THE SHIT HE HAS COMING TO HIM: James Frey's Gawker internship
We still can't figure out if a celebrity Gawker internship is something that happens on the way up or the way down. We hope in this case it continues to be down. (Did you read that fucking L.A. book? Miserable stuff.)
MOST DEPRESSING REVELATION REGARDING THE FINANCIAL REALITIES OF MAGAZINE JOURNALISM: Dan Baum's Per Annum
As recounted in his epic Twitter tale of his rise and fall at the New Yorker, Dan Baum made $90,000 a year, with no benefits, during his tenure at the magazine. Which, you know, isn't the most penurious state of affairs, but still, for a man who's reached what's widely considered the absolute peak of his field.
BEST LITERARY FAREWELL: John Updike in the New York Times
Man writes elegant little poem about his own death, dies. Here's the last stanza:
For life's a shabby subterfuge,
And death is real, and dark, and huge.
The shock of it will register
Nowhere but where it will occur.
This is true.
FIVE BEST UNCONFIRMED THOMAS PYNCHON SIGHTINGS
1. BrooklynVegan posted a series of photos of a gap-toothed man in a sailor suit interviewing pow wow! following their streetcorner unplugged set on the first night of the Northside Festival.
2. Page Six dished about the "unidentified author" who headbutted Jack McCollough at a gala fundraiser in May.
3. On May 13th, the lit blogger Cornelius Rochambeaux posted on his site, A Conspiracy of Pollywogs, that he had, earlier that month, been watching a Mets game at a Gramercy Tavern. Leaving his seat to go to the bathroom in between the fifth and sixth innings, he found himself urinating next to a wild-haired man, possibly in his sixties, who was mumbling something that, to Rochambeaux's ears, sounded like an account of the building of the V-2 rocket. Rochambeaux enlisted an artist friend to produce a sketch of the man from his descriptions, and posted it alongside several old photos of Pynchon. You can definitely see a resemblance.
4. If you look closely at Google's Street View of West 80th Street, about halfway between Columbus and Amsterdam, the odd-numbered side, you can see, partly obscured by a tree, a tall figure in a gray trenchcoat. Totally Pynchon.
5. Our best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Thomas Pynchon pass out at 31 Flavors last night.
BEST BASKETBALL LEAGUE FOR NERDS:
WORD Basketball League
Presumably tired of having to endure ceaseless jock banter for the sake of getting a game in, the Greenpoint bookstore organized a basketball league for its patrons and other book-lovers; teams like "The Virginia Wolves" and "The Purple Pros" play on courts across Brooklyn, and then (we presume) retire to the White Horse Tavern for whisky shots and bawdy recitals of verse.
BEST TINY LITTLE ZINE FROM AN ARTS COLLECTIVE: Birdsong
This raucous Williamsburg arts, music and poetry collective is lovingly wrangled by the tireless Tommy Pico, who oversees the monthly publication of a great-looking 'zine featuring art, poetry, prose and interviews. Holding a pleasing, lovingly crafted print object in your hands and realizing it is a reflection of artistic passion that seeks neither money nor celebrity — this is a rare and happy thing.
BEST REASON FOR THE NEW YORKER TO RETURN TO THE PRACTICE OF MAKING THEIR SUMMER FICTION ISSUE THE DEBUT FICTION ISSUE:
"The Tiger's Wife," by Tea Obreht
Appearing alongside — and overshadowing — new work from Jonathan Franzen and Edna O'Brien in this June’s double issue, the story, excerpted from Obreht's forthcoming first novel, was a multilayered tale touching on family, history, memory and legend in the former Yugoslavia. And it was written by a previously unpublished author fresh out of an MFA program, who won't turn 25 until next year. Hmm. On second thought, maybe it's just as well that this doesn't happen more often.
BEST DICK MOVE BY A HERO TO MILLIONS:
J.D. Salinger
For somebody who wants no part of the world, J.D. Salinger is sure picky about his place in it: the 90-year-old recluse sued, successfully, to block the publication of 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, an unauthorized sequel to you-know-what. If we had to watch our magnum opus become the favorite book of innumerable numbers of prep-school poseurs who misunderstood our ironic distance, we might throw up our hands and move to a cabin in Vermont, too — but we probably wouldn't keep a copyright attorney on speed-dial. You can't yell "Get off my lawn!" at the neighbor who's taken it upon himself to mow it for you.
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