David Rosenthal, who left his post at Simon & Schuster last summer, has been hired by Penguin USA to lead a new imprint. According to an article at the Times, the position will generate "competition between Penguin and Simon & Schuster," as Rosenthal pursues authors he has worked with in the past, who have included Bob Dylan and Bob Woodward. The editor himself sounds prepared to mix things up. "I’m going to make lots of trouble,” he said. “They’re going to let me go after the kind of—I wouldn’t say quirky—but the peculiar stuff that I sometimes like. What they want very much is for me to be able to indulge my passions, indulge my taste.”
The University of Texas's Harry Ransom Center has been on a roll this year: After obtaining the papers of David Foster Wallace and Denis Johnson, they have now acquired the archives of author-performer Spalding Gray.
At Salon, Jonathan Lethem offers a glimpse of his new, book-length, meticulous close reading of John Carpenter's cult sci-fi classic They Live.
Among the things you'll learn from an interview Tao Lin did while on Ecstasy: He doesn't think Asperger's Syndrome exists. He is much more depressed by rejection from women than he is by rejection from the press ("Like if I’ve emailed a girl that I like a lot and they haven’t responded in a few days, I feel really bad. The New York Times and other stuff like that doesn’t affect me at all"). And carbs are worse for you than heroin is.
Roxane Gay at htmlgiant overcomes her reservations about The Paris Review: "Is The Paris Review good? Grudgingly, I must revise my previous statement. The magazine is fucking exceptional and as a contrarian know that it pains me to admit that."
