First, James Frey wrote memoirs (or, you know, “memoirs”). Then he shifted to fiction. Now, apparently seeking out new genre territory to pillage, he’s writing scripture: Next week (on April 22, which is Good Friday), he’ll release his new book, The Final Testament of the Holy Bible. An excerpt at Vice presents a modern-day gospel set in contemporary New York City.
Mother Teresa, George W. Bush, the Bible, and much more come come under fire in this list of Christopher Hitchens’s “most provocative quotes.” Plus: a preview of a video featuring the brothers Hitchens debating Iraq, Christianity, and more.
A couple of years before Barry Hannah’s death, writer John Oliver Hodges toured Tuscaloosa, Alabama, with Hannah—or as Hannah puts it, they went “just toolin’ around” town, looking at the shack where he wrote Ray and telling stories of his drunken days.
The Second Pass revisits Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball, a biography poet Donald Hall wrote with the legendary, outspoken pitcher Dock Ellis (1945-2008), who is best remembered for pitching a no-hitter on acid.
Digital text and images meld in fascinating ways in a video demonstration by poet and Ubuweb founder Kenneth Goldsmith, who writes: “Never before has language had so much materiality—fluidity, plasticity, malleability—begging to be actively managed by the writer. Before digital language, words were almost always found imprisoned on a page. How different it is today.”
Sigrid Nunez talks with the Rumpus about her new book on Susan Sontag: “If you mean to suggest that she had two sides, a light one and a dark one, well, that doesn’t nearly cover it. Susan had many sides, just as she had many interests and abilities, and the desire to do many different things. She would have needed more than one life to do all the things she wanted to do, and was capable of doing.”
