Kill Bill

Paris Review: Egan’s story of how she wrote Goon Squad has been repeated on many occasions—she was frustrated with writing the novel she was supposed to and so she began to write interlocking stories about a handful of characters—but she admitted that evening that she owes a great debt to Quentin Tarantino for the way Goon Squad plays with chronology and narrative. “I had to completely let go of any kind of linear chronology,” Egan told us before playing the movie. “But it was interesting how hard that was to do. There was something in me that didn’t want to do it, even though I knew that the most fun of the book, even as I was working on it, was not going forward.”

Ed writes: The other day I was thinking about The Sound and the Fury, its radical, complex, time-bending structure. Then I seemed to recall that Quentin Tarantino was named after S&F's Quentin Compson. Is that true? Has QT ever talked about Faulkner as an influence? (I know he's acknowledged a debt to Salinger's Glass stories.)

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The headline to this post doesn't really make sense, but it sort of does if you don't think about it.

Reading! Lunchtime! Midtown! TODAY!

For Underwater New York:

Wednesday, June 30

12:30 – 1:45 pm

Bryant Park – 42nd Street between 5th and 6th Avenues

An afternoon with Underwater New York

Featuring

Music for Underwater Things by Michael Hearst;

Readings of original underwater stories by

Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

Ed Park, Personal Days: A Novel

Nelly Reifler, See Through: Stories

Said Sayrafiezadeh, When Skateboards Will Be Free: A Memoir

Deb Olin Unferth, Vacation;

And an underwater letter-writing activity from

Ben Greenman, What He’s Poised to Do: Stories

King Kullin'

"You are young," said the palaces and the temples and the shrines, "but we are old. The world was wild with youth when we were reared. You and your tribe shall pass, but we are invincible, indestructible. We towered above a strange world, ere Atlantis and Lemuria rose from the sea; we still shall reign when the green waters sigh for many a restless fathom above the spires of Lemuria and the green hills of Atlantis and when the isles of the Western Men are the mountains of a strange land.

"How many kings have we watched ride down these streets before Kull of Atlantis was even a dream in the mind of Ka, the bird of Creation? Ride on, Kull of Atlantis; greater shall follow you; greater came before you. They are dust; they are forgotten; we stand; we know; we are. Ride, ride on, Kull of Atlantis; Kull the king, Kull the fool!"

—Robert E. Howard, "The Shadow Kingdom" (1929)

(Via Grognardia)

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Speaking of Atlantis, I'll be reading next Wednesday (!) at 12:30 as part of the "Word for Word" series at the Bryant Park Reading Room. It's outside, free! It's Underwater New York day; the other readers are Deb Olin Unferth, Nelly Reifler, Said Sayrafiezadeh, and—new addition—Jennifer Egan! Plus Ben Greenman with a letter-writing activity and music from Michael Hearst.