I've been hearing about the legendary Lorin Stein -- a hip young editor at Farrar Straus and Giroux, probably the coolest of the major houses -- for years now. So I wasn't alone in cheering when he was appointed the new editor of the storied Paris Review.Stein -- who has edited novels by Denis Johnson, the press's translations of Bolano's Savage Detectives and 2666, and three of the five National … [Read more...]
Archives for March 2010
The Beginning — and the End — of The Clientele
Followers of the UK indie scene have been aware or the chimey, reverb-drenched Clientele for several years now. The band's current tour, which brings them to LA’s Spaceland on Friday and Saturday night, could likely be their last.Here is my LA Times piece on the band, which goes up Friday. I spoke to lead singer/guitarist Al MacLean about his early schooling in classical guitar, his fondness for … [Read more...]
Overpopulation and Robert Silverberg
This week sees the reissue of The World Inside, a long-obscure science-fiction novel that could become a miniseries on HBO.Of course, it's delicious to think of this hyper-urbanized future world -- in which people live in 800-story apartment complexes and have sex whenever they want -- serving as the setting for the next Deadwood or The Wire.The novel's author, Robert Silverberg, is a veteran sf … [Read more...]