By Matt Chaban 10/17/11 11:45am

Scary Stories

They've come... for your condo!

Colson Whitehead Unleashes Zombie Plague on Gentrification Plague

Colson Whitehead’s new book, Zone One comes out tomorrow. The world has been overtaken by that cultural virus of the moment, zombies , and the zone in question is Lower Manhattan. It is the job of the protagonist to clear the area of the dead and undead, and many metaphors are obviously implicit: 9/11, the financial crisis, Occupy Wall Street.

But it turns out that Mr. Whitehead’s biggest concern appears to be gentrification, as the native New Yorker revealed in an interview on NPR’s Morning Edition today. Read More

By Kat Stoeffel 10/03/11 7:19pm

grantland

McSweeney’s Publishes Grantland Quarterly, Blog-to-Print Journal

Today Grantland began selling Grantland Quarterly, a print anthology of the best reads from the sports and culture site so far. It is edited by Bill Simmons and Dan Fierman.

ESPN and Grantland have contracted McSweeney’s to handle the production and distribution (which, in retrospect, explains why Dave Eggers is a Grantland contributing editor). Read More

By Kat Stoeffel 8/16/11 2:05pm

off the record

classical

The Classical Will Publish Post-Punk Sports Journalism…If We Kickstart Them

Yesterday a Kickstarter announced the arrival of The Classical, yet another daily web publication dedicated to the burgeoning world of alternative sportswriting. This one is the brainchild of a cerebral fraternity of sports and culture bros, including Bloomsbury editor (and rumored pub-trivia powerhouse) Pete Beatty, Pitchfork and Village Voice vet Tom Breihan, Yahoo! Read More

By Jonathan Liu 4/28/09 8:13pm

The Hamptons Renaissance

Sag Harbor
By Colson Whitehead
Doubleday, 273 pp., $24.95

On this past January’s third Tuesday, Barack H. Obama was sworn in as president of the United States. On its fourth Tuesday, John H. Updike died at the age of 76.

I have no doubt the old man savored the gravity and relief of life Read More

By Adam Begley 1/08/07 12:00am

Walter Mosley Is Easy— And Sex-Saturated, Too

The first of many erotic insertions (this particular act was illegal in several states until just last year) occurs on page six. Just a page and a half later comes the first of many existential pangs, this one provoked by a diorama at the Museum of Natural History:

“The wolves running in the night were Read More

By Alexandra Wolfe, Anna Jane Grossman and Jake Brooks 1/12/04 12:00am

King Conked by Yunqué

The 92nd Street Y’s “Writing New York” reading on Jan. 5 should have been a placid affair. Three authors, all of whom live in and write about the city, were to read from their current work: Jonathan Lethem, Colson Whitehead and the mustachioed Edgardo Vega Yunqué. Mr. Lethem, who won the National Book Critics Circle Read More

By Adam Begley 7/23/01 12:00am

Air Miles and Press Junkets, Consumerism and Coincidence

Up in the Air , by Walter Kirn. Doubleday, 303 pages, $23.95.

John Henry Days , by Colson Whitehead. Doubleday, 389 pages, $24.95.

Here’s a curious case of literary overlap: Walter Kirn’s new novel, Up in the Air , is about a man obsessed with amassing one million frequent-flyer miles. Meanwhile, in Colson Whitehead’s Read More