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The 10 Most Recent Dispatches
- The Bat Segundo Show: Agnieszka Holland
- The Bat Segundo Show: Stephen Fry
- The Bat Segundo Show: Deborah Scroggins
- Komen for the Cowards: Betraying Breast Cancer
- The Bat Segundo Show: Susan Cain
- Forgotten Writers: Dorothy Uhnak
- Dwight Garner’s Revisionist Ignorance: Ayaan Hirsi Ali
- Forgotten Writers: The Novels of John P. Marquand
- The Situation in American Waffles
- The Bat Segundo Show: Elliot Perlman
Modern Library Reading Challenge
On January 10, 2011, Managing Editor Edward Champion pledged to read the top 100 fiction books from #100 to #1. Read about his progress as he makes his way through the Modern Library canon!
84. The Death of the Heart (January 6, 2012)
85. Lord Jim (November 30, 2011)
86. Ragtime (October 30, 2011)
Books To Jump Up and Down Over
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (Bat Segundo interview with Murphy)
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (Bat Segundo interview with McClear)
Literary Hipsters Archive
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The Literary Hipster’s Handbook — 2011 Q4 Edition
Posted on November 18, 2011 | 5 CommentsAfter five years, our quarterly installment of the Literary Hipster's Handbook returns, featuring "Rowan job," "Eugenides Vest," and "woodwinked." -
The Literary Hipster’s Handbook, 2006 Q4 Edition
Posted on September 26, 2006 | 3 Comments“bad beef”: A literary prize ostensibly designed to assist struggling writers that goes instead to writers who don’t need the cash or the praise. Recent examples of bad beef include... -
The Literary Hipster’s Handbook — 2006 Q3 Edition
Posted on August 15, 2006 | No Comments“ALK”: An unexpected career move by a literary person in a non-literary endeavor. (Ex. I saw Frank cutting the rug in a ballroom last night, man, but it turns out... -
The Literary Hipster’s Handbook, 2006 Q1 Edition
Posted on January 11, 2006 | 3 Comments“Almond”: (n.) Generally, a talentless and paranoid midlist writer who believes in conspiracies and hallucinations. Almonds often have difficulty understanding eccentrics and are fond of convincing editors to pay them... -
Wholphin, Eggers and Why I Can’t Believe
Posted on January 11, 2006 | 6 CommentsI picked up the January 2005 issue of The Believer, partly with the intention of seeing if the magazine was showing any signs of shedding its feel-good trappings (short answer:... -
Chronicle of Outsiders
Posted on October 26, 2005 | No CommentsThe Expatriate Literary Circle (via Largehearted Boy) -
In Defense of Bret Easton Ellis
Posted on October 3, 2005 | 2 CommentsJust when we thought we had heard the last about Lunar Park, Dan Green has offered this thoughtful post on the book, approaching Ellis’ work from the standpoint of Lunar... -
Hiatus (Sorta)
Posted on September 12, 2005 | 1 CommentWe’ve been working our keisters off here. Two Segundo shows in the works (one we hope to get up tonight with a very special guest), with a third one on... -
Giving Head to a Hot Young Writer: A Special Column by Jay McInerney
Posted on August 29, 2005 | 2 CommentsWe were drinking Stoli and snorting lines off an expensive hooker’s back, discussing a certain young stallion who’d the paper of record had puffed up before and who we had... -
Chuck Klosterman: A Manboy Who Must Be Stopped
Posted on August 24, 2005 | 29 CommentsBack when Chuck Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs came out, Mark Ames penned a remarkably vicious review for the New York Press. At the time, I was only familiar... -
“Real Life” Fiction
Posted on November 10, 2004 | 5 CommentsMaud points to “literature from the underground” from the ULA, everybody’s favorite group of Knut Hamsun/Henry Miller flunkies. One suspects that the ULA’s problem is their aversion to editing. So... -
The Literary Hipster’s Handbook — 2004 Q2 Edition
Posted on May 26, 2004 | 4 Comments“con-fuse”: When an author uses his reputation to offer an overlong and unedited book, thus conning his audience into buying or reading it, and eventually lighting the reader’s fuse. (Or:... -
Those Nanny Diaries Gals Ain’t Got Nothin’ On Plum Sykes
Posted on March 29, 2004 | No CommentsSykes, a 34-year-old contributing editor at Vogue and the more dramatic sister of a nineties ?It?-girl twin set??Lucy and I were Paris and Nicky without the sex tape??received a $625,000...