Thou, Rex!

[In Darconville's Cat] Theroux...encrypted his former lover's name in acrostics and anagrams, and even cited her as the author of the spoof books whose titles are scattered through the novel....

--Paul Quinn, "Anatomies of Love and Hate," a review of Alexander Theroux's Laura Warholic, TLS

I was told there'd be blogging

1. So there have been other reviews of Laura Warholic! Check out what Dizzyhead Darren dug up—Dizzies fave Richard Stern writing on Theroux in the Chicago Tribune. It begins:

Want to know what J. Edgar Hoover's three favorite drag ensembles were, or the names of the women who invented the safety pin, goat cheese, the child's car seat and the circular saw, or the kind of patrons a "doom-dark," "cavernous" club called The Sewing Circle attracts? Want to read brilliantly virulent tirades against women, whites, blacks, Jews, Christians, Generation X, the U.S. and mankind a la Alexander Pope's "Dunciad" and Juvenal's satires?

If so, the novel "Laura Warholic; or, The Sexual Intellectual" is the book for you.

(Can't find a link, but will e-mail the text if you like.)

2. Why I love country music: The Sweenster on Porter Wagoner:

I feel especially lucky because my wife and I were able to see him perform twice this year—once at the Opry on our trip to Nashville, and again at MSG when he opened for The White Stripes, which we saw the night after we were married. Porter was there for us when we needed him...

3. Via Hua, Buffalo's own Mercury Rev covers "Isolation."

4. Excited about these recent arrivals on the new doorstep—two less similar books, there can not be!: Sloane Crosley's I Was Told There'd Be Cake and Lynne Sharon Schwartz's Emergence of Memory: Conversations With W.G. Sebald.

Late-day post

New Believer is out—the incredible visual issue! Sheila Heti interviews Dave Hickey...Claudine Ko talks to Ai Weiwei...temporary tattoos...Paul Collins...Alexander Provan on Las Vegas carpetry and Dizzyhead Fhyll on Eileen Chang...the first review I've read of Alexander Theroux's massive new novel Laura Warholic....plus more Dave Hickey...and more more more, it's really good!

And the new New-York Ghost is out—the incredible letters issue!