authors

Dan Brown's Ideal Reading Experience Is Not Having to Read

Hamilton Nolan · 06/20/13 01:25PM

How did Dan Brown, the immensely popular and successful bad writer behind such hits as The Da Vinci Code and Hey, There's a Treasure Map Under This Painting!, get to be such an immensely popular and successful bad writer? He just loves "reading," meaning "listening to stuff."

Hamilton Nolan · 05/23/13 09:23AM

In this lively interview, Lit author Mary Karr calls James Frey a "lying sack of shit" and says "Dr. Drew should be shot."

Ask Former TARP Official Neil Barofsky How the Government Sold Out Citizens to Bail Out Wall Street

Hamilton Nolan · 08/07/12 12:45PM

Neil Barofsky was at the very center of the U.S. government's response to the 2008 economic collapse. He spent more than two years, until March of 2011, as Special Inspector General for the TARP program, overseeing and monitoring government bailout funds. Now, Barofsky has written a ferocious book detailing how, he says, "Washington abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street." And he's here to take questions from you, the Main Streeters.

Gawker Book Club: Speak of the Devil, by Aaron Gell

Hamilton Nolan · 12/19/11 12:30PM

Peter Braunstein was a former writer for The Village Voice, WWD and other New York publications who became a tabloid sensation in 2005 after he went crazy, raped a woman [Correction: Braunstein was convicted of kidnapping, sexual abuse, robbery and burglary. He was never charged with rape], and went on the run. Aaron Gell (now an editor at the New York Observer), a former colleague of Braunstein's, has revisited the man and tried to make sense of his crimes in his new Kindle Single, Speak of the Devil: How Peter Braunstein went from Fashion Casualty to Tabloid Monster.

H.L. Mencken Not New Yorker Material, Says Unbearable Little Man

Hamilton Nolan · 11/08/11 11:44AM

In Slate today, Adam Gopnik, the "Adam Gopnik's kids" correspondent for The New Yorker, explains the fine distinctions of New Yorkerania: "compare Mencken and Liebling, often mistaken as twin stylists, and you see the difference between heavy-handed Teutonic mockery and the ideal ironic, stinging, New Yorker tone."

Derrick Bell, Scholar and Racial Activist

Hamilton Nolan · 10/06/11 08:28AM

Derrick Bell, a leading racial thinker and law school professor, has died at the age of 80. Besides being an accomplished author, founder of critical race theory, and the first tenured black law professor at Harvard, Bell was famous for quitting jobs on principle: as a young man, he quit a job at the Justice Department rather than resign from the NAACP; and later, he gave up a teaching job at Harvard in order to protest their minority hiring record. From the NYT:

Village Voice Media Not Liable for Child Prostitution

Hamilton Nolan · 08/17/11 02:28PM

In your hopeful Wednesday media column: someone gives Capital New York some dough, Chris Rovzar leaves New York, Elisabeth Murdoch has tons of News Corp shareholder cash, Village Voice sex lawsuit dismissed, and the world's highest paid authors.

Book Store Owners Are Onto You, Cheapskates

Hamilton Nolan · 06/22/11 09:38AM

You think the owner of that book store doesn't know what you're doing? Oh, they know exactly what you're doing. You say you "love" books? You say you enjoy perusing the soothing aisles of a book store, so lovingly curated by a book store owner who spends his or her life ensuring that the very latest and most interesting book selections are there, presented for you in the most interesting possible way? You like that a lot? Yeah. So you can go home and order that shit online. Fuckers.

The 'Advertising in Books' Wall Has Been Breached

Hamilton Nolan · 04/26/11 11:24AM

Harry Hurt III (pictured, with pal) used to write a column in the New York Times business section called "Executive Pursuits," in which Harry Hurt went off and did something wacky and upscale and wrote about it. It always struck me as a wholly unnecessary exercise in self-absorption, which had nothing to do with business at all, except for the fact that Harry Hurt is a rich guy. Now, he's back—pioneering the use of advertising and product placement in books. Oh. Good.

Snooki Would Like You to Call Her By Her Real Name Now

Brian Moylan · 01/05/11 12:30PM

Jersey Shore heffalump Snooki told the Daily News that she'd like to be called by her real name, Nicole, now that she's a published author. Here are some good reasons why that will never happen.