Friday, June 27, 2014

Book of the Week: ‘The Last Magazine’ by Michael Hastings

I’m not sure if it was a coincidence that a few hours before opening up The Last Magazine, the posthumously published novel by the journalist Michael Hastings, I read an article about another young writer who died too soon in a car accident, Marina Keegan — but the two things felt connected. Sure, award-winning war corespondent Hastings was over a decade older than Keegan when he died in a car accident last June, and comparing a bestselling writer like Hastings to Keegan, who was a few weeks away from starting her first big staff job with The New Yorker, might not seem totally apt; but I couldn’t help think there was something that connected these two writer who died too young, and who had so much more to give us. Understandably, it made opening to the first pages of The Last Magazine a somewhat melancholy affair. … Read More

'The Man, The Writer, and His Cigarette': Szilvia Molnar Hilariously Recreates Male Writers' Smoking Author Photos

‘The Man, The Writer, and His Cigarette’: Szilvia Molnar Hilariously Recreates Male Writers’ Smoking Author Photos

Szilvia Molnar’s photo series, “The Man, The Writer, and His Cigarette” has been a bright spot on Twitter, illuminating the self-seriousness that drives many male author’s cool-guy headshots with funny, amateur recreations. As of this week, the artist and writer — who works in the publishing industry — has tackled a variety pack of male writers from around the world: Mr. My Struggle himself, Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard, along with England and Brooklyn’s Martin Amis, Swiss writer Peter Stamm, and, of course, Brett Easton Ellis, as American as apple pie. We can only hope that she finds a photo of Jonathan Franzen smoking (rumor has it he does smoke weed). … Read More

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