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...]
"After the End of History"
IT'S the kind of phrase, however memorable, that the speaker probably wishes he could take back. when francis fukuyama responded to the fall of berlin wall -- the close of the cold war -- by calling it "the end of history" it seemed to make sense, and it fit into an argument by postmodern scholars -- fredric jameson especially -- that we were living in a context-free epoch that had no use for … [Read more...]
The Glorious Sprawl of Built to Spill
I KNOW i'm not alone in considering built to spill, the boise band that sometimes offers three guitars blaring in a kind of rough counterpoint, to be one of the key bands of the alt-rock heyday of the 90s. unlike a lot of those groups, they've managed to grow in feeling in each record, even if their style has not changed massively in 10 years or so.they are also one of the greatest live bands in … [Read more...]