Albert Einstein was an atheist.

And he had little patience for God, religion, and the Bible.

And now for another Julian Casablancas post…

I’m really turning into a little Julian Casablancas fanboy, there’s no point in hiding this fact. His first solo album, Phrazes for the Young, comes out tomorrow, and I’m very excited! I’ve heard all of it, thanks to the wonders of the internet, but I love it so much that I’m still going to buy it. Below is one of my favorites, “Glass,” for your listening pleasure, and here’s a profile of him that ran in the New York Times.

What to write next…

Here is a very snarky, but nonetheless very amusing essay by Colson Whitehead in the New York Times that purports to be a list with descriptions of the genres or types of novels that Colson has on a dartboard in his house for when he’s about to embark on a new novel. Some great parodies of dirty realism and postmodernism and possibly a shot at Toni Morrison.

The Color White

Here is a wonderful little essay by G.K. Chesterton called “A Piece of Chalk.” It espouses the moral and philosophical ramifications that result when one acknowledges that white is a color and not the absence of color. Believe me, it’s much more interesting than the summary I just provided.

Neurological

Marco Roth has written a wonderful essay in N+1 on “The Rise of the Neuronovel.” It is an insightful, necessary examination of the trend, in the last decade or so, of novelists using neurological disorders such as Capgras syndrome, schizophrenia, Tourette’s, et al. to justify and explain away any eccentricities in their characters’ thoughts and in their own prose. This approach severely limits the project, inherited from modernism, of exploring human consciousness. These novelists, by bowing to the prevailing wisdom, that science will eventually explain and codify every wrinkle of human consciousness, have abandoned the worthy literary task of observing the remaining mysteries of our inner selves.

Julian, Jay & The Strokes

I don’t know about you, but I am very excited for the Nov. 3rd release of Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas’ first solo album, entitled Phrazes for the Young. To celebrate, I point you to this insightful and (to me, anyway, quite interesting) profile of the Strokes from 2006, written for New York magazine by author Jay McInerney. It offers a balanced portrayal of the band’s rise to fame and of the sometimes tense relationship between its mercurial frontman and the rest of the group. Excellent piece by McInerney. There are few things I enjoy more than well-done profiles of artists/groups that I admire.

The Voice of David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace reading his piece “Death is Not the End” from the collection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Bravo

Nonsense!

Here’s an interesting article from the New York Times positing that Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect. Kind of interesting stuff.

Tao Lin

Get to know Tao Lin, author most recently of Shoplifting from American Apparel, through this wonderful interview he did with the Rumpus. He is an intriguing figure, in that he has cultivated a rabidly self-promoting online persona and in many interviews seems to dares you to write him off as vapid and nihilistic, but seems to be, in reality, a hard-working, earnest, shy writer with very interesting ideas. Not to mention this vapid nihilist has for literary influences the decidedly human and moral writers Lorrie Moore and Joy Williams, amongst others. The interview linked to above best shows his “serious” side, as he would scare-quote it. For a taste of his “comedic” side, or “snarky” side, check out The Levels of Greatness a Fiction Writer Can Achieve in America. Also see his blog here.

Yes!

This article by John Barry in the Baltimore City Paper about the dead end of young writers attempting to duplicate the poetic yearning of the final paragraph in James Joyce’s “The Dead” hits close to home. I won’t summarize the message Barry has for young short story writing aspirants—read it! Fantastic. A lot to think about for me, as an aspiring writer and a Joyce fanatic who hits his head against the wall trying to find poetry in words as opposed to capturing something of what’s in the air, what’s being said, what’s happening now, in an actual external as well as internal world. Thanks to HTMLGIANT.