Phife Dawg aka Malik Taylor, the raspy half of the seminal hiphop band A Tribe Called Quest, has died at the age of 45. The brilliant, funny, wise, immensely talented and lovable rapper from Queens had suffered from diabetes and other ailments for years. Despite his renown as one … Read the rest
I was nothing but psyched when I heard that postmodern novelist Colson Whitehead was writing a book about poker. Sure sounded like a great idea to me.
Whitehead is a clever, acidic satirist with a gift for inventive situations and touching emotional connections. Can he write? Absolutely — novels like … Read the rest
Exactly 150 years today, the most grueling and relentless eight days of the Civil War in the United States of America began. These are the opening days of the Overland Campaign, in which two armies rampaged south through north-central Virginia in their final race towards Richmond, capital city of the … Read the rest
Thanks to Nelson Mandela, I have a new favorite word. I’m serious about this; I like this word a lot.
I’ve known about “Ubuntu” for years, but I always thought it was a distribution of the Linux open source operating system. I’ve installed and used Ubuntu Linux often. … Read the rest
I’m too lazy to try to put together a coherent “best books of 2012” list on Literary Kicks, though I’m happy to point you to some other good lists. “A Year in Reading” at the Millions overflows with contributions from smart folks like Kate Zambreno, Scott Esposito, Alexander … Read the rest
1. A favorite baseball player of mine died last week.
2. Here’s a fun literary site that’s been making the rounds: police sketches based on descriptions of fictional characters, by Brian Joseph Davis. I’m particularly impressed by his Emma Bovary and Humbert Humbert, but I sense subconscious influence … Read the rest
1. Ann Beattie’s new novel is Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life
(Yeah, we know that everybody’s talking about the Football World Cup and the Celtics/Lakers NBA Finals right now. Well, here at Litkicks we’ve never cared what anybody else was talking about, and baseball remains the greatest American literary sport. Here’s an extensive roundup of the classic legacy by Alan Bisbort, … Read the rest
As the newspaper business shrinks, the hazard of insularity increases. Three weeks ago the New York Times Book Review put Christopher Buckley’s rave review of the roman a clef The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman of the International Herald Tribune on the cover, ignoring the fact that 99% of the NYTBR’s … Read the rest
