Norman Mailer: “It’s a shame in the literary world today that passion has withered, producing fiction that is all too unforgettable.”
Okay, either that’s a funny typo or Norman Mailer is genuinely advocating novels that are bristling with passion but that are somehow forgettable in nature.
Astonishing interview with L. Ron, Jr. (via MeFi)
New meme. Bold the titles. You know the drill. (via this guy)
Here goes:
1. The HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — Douglas Adams
2. Nineteen Eighty-Four — George Orwell
.3. Brave New World — Aldous Huxley
4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? — Philip Dick
5. Neuromancer — William Gibson
6. Dune — Frank Herbert
7. I, Robot — Isaac Asimov
8. Foundation — Isaac Asimov
9. The Colour of Magic — Terry Pratchett
10. Microserfs — Douglas Coupland
11. Snow Crash — Neal Stephenson
12. Watchmen — Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
13. Cryptonomicon — Neal Stephenson
14. Consider Phlebas — Iain M Banks
15. Stranger in a Strange Land — Robert Heinlein
16. The Man in the High Castle — Philip K Dick
17. American Gods — Neil Gaiman
18. The Diamond Age — Neal Stephenson
19. The Illuminatus! Trilogy — Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson
20. Trouble with Lichen – John Wyndham
The Goldberg brothers, hot on the heels of their Dean Koontz exposes, have taken over Beatrice’s confines this week. The idea of a pair of brothers taking over the litblogosphere appeals to our nihilistic sensibilities. So we may very well promote all future Goldberg Bros. appearances with half the zeal that we reserve for Jonathan Ames. Simply because we really like the sentence, “My Monk is recognizeable as the TV character but, in some ways, he’s my own Monk.” If only we had our own Monk to play with, to mould, and to otherwise do naughty things to, we’d be just as jocose. Oh well. There’s always Monk/The O.C. slash fan fiction for us. And the hell of it is that we’re neither Catholic nor OCD.