Food: Ali Baba
Casey McKinney11.14.09
I won’t go into too much detail, but you know how they say people get lactose intolerant? Well I think I caught this ’cause someone I knew didn’t…
Magazine: McSweeney’s & The Believer combo subscription
Casey McKinney11.14.09
Note price correction, originally way off: But here’s a deal if there ever was. For $90 you get 4 issues of McSweeney’s and 10 of The…
Notes from the Brink – Reintroducing The Love Language
Brian Howe11.14.09
Brian Howe gets a rather full scoop on a band that, while still on the rise, has already been pegged with a storied mystique and an expected sound. Call the eponymous The Love Language a debut of lo-fi heartbreak if you must, but frontman Stuart McLamb and company have whipped up music some say is as big as Big Star, as anthemic as Arcade Fire or as classic as a Guided by Voices gem, and LL brings it with a patchwork wall of sound that only makes one wonder what the next, perhaps more refined, Merge Records LP will bring. But no pressure folks, really…Yeah right.
Nabokov’s Unfinished Novel Available (as Vlad rolls in his grave)
Casey McKinney11.13.09
In the latest Bookforum there’s an article about the resurrected last novel of Vladamir Nabokov, a book he meant…
Film: RiP: A Remix Manifesto
Ben Bush11.13.09
My own position on copyright gets muddier and muddier but this is a compelling and visually enticing copyleft documentary starring the usual suspects…
Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem
Daniel Hamilton11.13.09
Jonathan Lethem has been cultivating under "an umbrella"… "ideas about identity, culture, history, cities, and loss" since 1999’s Motherless Brooklyn, Daniel Hamilton writes in this review for Fanzine. Chronic city, Lethem’s latest, is "a story about storytelling", one that unloads a giant gobstopper of a plot in the author’s most postmodern novel to date.
Music: The Jesus Lizard Tour
Casey McKinney11.06.09
‘Ello Kiddies, in case you never saw this one 5 footish, screwy eyed, seemingly ever acid tripping, dangerously cowboy-booted Texan David Yow dive…
Music: Haunting The Chapel: Brandon Stosuy’s Metal Column
Casey McKinney11.04.09
Days ago, October 30th, readers of Brandon Stosuy’s (a fanzine contributor among a zillion other things) metal column Show No Mercy, which ran on…
‘Indentical City’
Joshua Cohen11.04.09
Scary doesn’t end abruptly each year at the 24 hundred hour, 10/31. We’re gonna keep up the creep through the new year if we can help it… thusly, here’s a nervy piece from Joshua Cohen. One of the most productive and inventive authors we’ve read in years, Cohen is always a pleasure to have on Fanzine. His teeming talent is metered by an earthy humor and humility (when I wrote him and said I thought he was more Joyce than Faulkner based on a recent Rumpus interview, he said actually all the inspiration comes from The Uncle Floyd Show). ‘Identical City’ is from his Genizah series, which he will be reading from November 6th at the Writers House at New York University (58 West 10th St., 5pm. Come if in NY). Art here by Danny Jock.
Three Documentaries by Werner Herzog
Tao Lin11.02.09
Writer Tao Lin and director Werner Herzog share a certain interest in stunts that, rather than a means to an end, begin to seem like an extension of the work itself. Herzog’s film Heart of Glass was performed almost entirely by a cast of hypnotized actors and, after daring Errol Morris to complete his first documentary, Herzog famously ate his own shoe. Tao Lin has funded his literary efforts in part by selling shares in his forthcoming novel Richard Yates ($2000 per) and using eBay to sell Gmail chats with him on various substances such as methadone, adderall, green juice and iced coffee. ($31-$61) Lin’s recent novella Shoplifting from American Apparel is an engaging and unusual read that packs a lot of twists into its seemingly straightforward sentences. More on Herzog from the Fanzine later this month when Matty Byloos reviews his upcoming Bad Lieutenant 2: Port of Call New Orleans.
