Ocean Vuong talked poetry, fiction, and nonfiction with the Guardian.
I’ve always believed, both in fiction and poetry, in Wallace Stevens’s ideal of imaginative writing coming from a “supreme fiction”. That is, that the poem is an opportunity to turn from memoiristic transcription of information towards a kind of ultimate artefact, charged and changed by the imagination. And it’s through this lens that I approach storytelling in my work.
Vol. 1 Brooklyn interviewed Eluvium’s Matthew Robert Cooper.
I’d like to talk about the literary influences on (Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality. Is this the first time you, as a musician, have drawn from literary influences or is that something that’s suffused a lot of your music to date?
The influences were T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and Richard Brautigan’s All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace. And I’m not positive that they were so much selected as just being many of the different themes and ideas that I’ve been kind of sketching out. I guess I just naturally got steered towards them, so I don’t know if it’s so much that I chose them as maybe they chose me — or something like that.
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Radiohead drummer Philip Selway talked side projects with The Creative Independent.
The Boston Globe recommended summer’s best new books.
Pitchfork, Paste, and Bandcamp Daily recommended the week’s best new albums.
Brandon Taylor discussed his new novel with the Guardian.
Lucinda Williams discussed her new album and memoir with The Current.
C.E. McGill recommended novels that honor women’s unsees contributions to science at Electric Literature.
Ilsey and Bon Iver covered Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold.”
People excerpted the first chapter of Elliott Page’s memoir Pageboy.
NPR Music remembered Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho.
“I think that sound and color are not completely detached from each other,” the composer told NPR last year. “That’s maybe how it is in our brain. And I think that certain sounds, or certain kinds of music, can have even a specific smell. So I feel that all the senses are somehow present when I compose.”
Shondaland recommended June’s best books.
Stream a new song by Bloc Party.
The Atlantic recommended books for summer reading.
Paste profiled Bully’s Alicia Bognonno.
“Songwriting, for me, has always been triggered by grief or emotional distress. I think about it a lot, too, because someone was [saying], ‘Oh, you never write about anything happy?’ And I would say that’s true, because, when I’m geeling great, I’m not writing a song. That’s more driven by grief and shame.”
Paul Murray discussed his new novel The Bee Sting with the Guardian.
…I’ve got to say, when I was writing it, I felt very happy. It felt very organic and the characters felt quite alive for me, and I could just dump all of my sadness into the book and then go off and have a sandwich and feel fine.
Weird Nightmare covered the Ramones’ “She’s the One.”
Book Riot listed the year’s best horror books so far.
Bandcamp Daily explored the legacy of the band the Exploding Hearts.
Amber Sparks weighed the pros and cons of literary awards at Slate.
The Tallest Man on Earth covered James Blake’s “Say What You Will.’
Kamila Shamsie talked books and reading with the Guardian.
The Guardian profiled singer-songwriter Jenny Lewis.
Paste interviewed singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright.
John K Samson has released a new EP as Vivat Virtute, his project with his partner Christine Fellows.