Is Andrew Morton's biography of Angelina Jolie the worst book of the decade or just the "worst book of the 21st century so far"? Such are the weighty matters pondered by Allen Barra at Salon; you can practically see Barra pout as he points out: "this Jolie junkie found practically nothing that I hadn't seen before and mostly dismissed as utter crap. Much of Morton's research seems to have been done while standing in supermarket lines." Which—for all the charm of Salt and Girl, Interrupted—is where we do most of our Jolie research, too.
Pete Hamill's new book on immigration will be strictly digital, leaving the legendary chronicler of Greenwich village to wonder: “Will there be a book signing?” Answer: Sure—bring your Sharpie, and scrawl your tag on everyone's Kindle.
Novelist and n+1 editor Benjamin Kunkel reflects on the last decade of American fiction: "More productive [than trading] accusations of snobbery or equally plausible charges of reverse snobbery would be to ask whether a given work points us toward or maneuvers us away from what it’s somewhat embarrassing to call the truth of the world."
The Paris Review blog has launched a column titled "Department of Sex Ed," which, if we're reading it correctly, requires the poster to comment on a book that featured prominently in his or her sexual awakening. Our favorite so far has been by Giancarlo DiTrapano, the mastermind behind the literary magazine New York Tyrant and Tyrant Books (which just published what promises to become a cult classic, Eugene Marten's Firework). Here, he explains how A Confederacy of Dunces made him realize that he's hot for men like Ignatius, a "waddling, unkempt mammoth toddler with 'blue and yellow eyes' and crumbs in his mustache."
