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Jonathan Safran Foer
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the shingles
Jonathan Safran Foer Has The Shingles
...according to a tipster who says this shocking fact was "revealed in an email to the writing class he's teaching at yale." Also: "heard he's very grumpy and said this week's essays had better make life worth living." Anyone else have more details? Is this our fault? Did we give him the shingles with our psychic ill-will?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER, UNDERMINER
In response to Vanity Fair's earlier item about the play by an old friend of novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, about how novelist Jonathan Safran Foer suddenly got very rich and famous while his old friend did not, Foer says, "his play is hilarious and great. I hope it's bigger than The Lion King." [VF, Earlier]
In response to Vanity Fair's earlier item about the play by an old friend of novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, about how novelist Jonathan Safran Foer suddenly got very rich and famous while his old friend did not, Foer says, "his play is hilarious and great. I hope it's bigger than The Lion King." [VF, Earlier]
feuds
Someone Wrote a Play About Jonathan Safran Foer!
From lovable Brooklynite novelist Jonathan "Safran" Foer (the hip one!) to New Republic editor Franklin Foer (he's the serious one!) to stunt-rememberer and baby brother Joshua Foer (he will come up with some way to bother us later!), everyone loves the Foer Brothers. Everyone except, apparently, playwright Itamar Moses, who has written a play about how much he hates his successful old band camp buddy Jonathan Safran Foer. Vanity Fair noticed that the two main characters in Moses's The Four of Us are quite a bit like Moses and Foer, as one is a mostly unknown playwright and the other is a ridiculously successful young novelist. There is some jealousy. Then Moses makes fun of Liev Schreiber! More »
Being a Brooklyn Writer turns out to be exactly how you imagine it to be, if debut novelist Porochista Khakpour's Facebook status update is to be believed.
"Yale Visiting Professor Jonathan Safran Foer" has a nice ring to it! According to one Yale English prof: "He's got quite a buzz surrounding him right now in literary circles." Oh! Hmm. Also! "Although Foer was rejected from Yale as a high school senior and attended Princeton University as an undergraduate, his brother Joshua Foer '04 said he thinks Jonathan and Yale will be a better match this time around." [Yale Daily News]
the jews
The Jewish Cabal Of Publishing
Hey, have you ever noticed that famous bestselling authors like Michael Chabon, Jonathan Safran Foer, Nathan Englander, Nicole Krauss, and Myla Goldberg all have something in common? That's right: Jewiness. I know, you're shocked. But did you also know that an under-the-radar Jewish organization called the Jewish Book Council may be somewhat responsible for these young heebs' rises to fame and fortune? In a column that will run in this Sunday's book review headlined 'Star Search' (heh!), Rachel Donadio explains the inner workings of the Jewish Book Network, which holds American Idol-style cattle call auditions, described as "somewhere between J-Date and a camel auction," for Jewish authors. The winners then get to tour Jewish book fairs around the country, which doesn't sound like such a prize until you learn, as we just did from a publicist, that authors can sell "up to 300 books" at each of these events, which is nothing to sneeze at. The Jew tour does have its perils, though, as one author learned: "Do not follow the woman who has just published a book on how all her children were murdered in Treblinka. It's much preferable to follow the woman who has 100 halvah recipes." Oh, those nutty Jews and their culturally-specific brand of humor!
lit boys
Joshua Ferris Running Scared Of Foer-Krauss Mafia
Young Joshua Ferris's debut about working at an ad agency at the tail end of the dot-com boom is one of our favorite books we've read in a while, so it pains us to have to acknowledge that he is a pussy. At his book party, he told us in no uncertain terms that Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss "deserve all the shit you guys heap on them." Ok, it was a festive occasion and perhaps the celebratory cocktails had loosened Ferris's lips, but! Here's his current take on whether or not The Most Important, Rich, and Precocious Literary Couple Of Our Time deserve to be mocked: "Whatever shit they may or may not have deserved is far less than the shit I deserve for having said publicly that they deserved any shit whatsoever. I spoke unnecessarily of a very minor matter about which I knew very little, and so despite the likelihood that my comments didn't even reach them, I'm glad you asked, so that I can set the record straight: I'm the shitheel." I'll say!
jonathan safran foer
Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss Need Their Space
Oh, those crazy Safran Foer Krausses! We had almost managed to convince ourselves that they didn't matter anymore—after all, they've been too busy pooping out little scribblers to crank out any irritatingly overhyped books lately. But last night we heard this tidbit, from a source close to the writers, that made us feel the inadequacy of our lives and real estate holdings as sharply as we did when we first read of their acquisition of a $6.7 million Park Slope brownstone. Apparently, Nicole was recently asked why she and Jon found it necessary to move from their old house, a $3 millionish brownstone a block away. "Well," she said, "You know, we're planning to have at least two kids, and obviously we all need our own floor." More »
jonathan safran foer
Glaring Literary Power Couple Omission
Yesterday, we asked you to choose your least favorite among the Jonathans, Bens and Davids of the literary world and their lovely writer-spouses. You voted for Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss by a pretty substantial margin, spanking runners-up Davendela and Michayelet. Nicole wins a signed copy of the execrable Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and Jonathan will receive a signed copy of the 'we hear it's not bad but we have a deep-seated antipathy towards anything contemporary with 'Love' in the title which always strikes us as a marketing gimmick' The History of Love. The couple will also receive a free lifetime subscription to nonexistent UnderCover magazine as well as the privilege of being henceforth referred to as Jonicole. Unfortunately, we didn't include every lit-scene power pair in our poll; a commenter wrote in Salman and Padma (how could we forget her contribution to the canon, Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet?). But the omission we feel worst about has got to be this one: More »
jonathan safran foer
Annoying Literary Lovebirds Poll
For a long time, we've dreamt of a magazine called UnderCover, which would basically be Us Weekly but for literary "celebrities." The whole thing would be like "Jennifer Egan loses the baby weight!" and telephoto lens shots of JonathanMore »
joshua foer
Joshua Foer Sells Film Rights to Unwritten Memoir
So yeah, Slate scribe and Jonathan Safran Foer sib Joshua sold his memoir about memorizing shit to Anne Godoff for a cool 1.2 million, like we said.Today we learn that film rights to the book, now tentatively titled Moonwalking with Einstein, have sold to Paramount.
The book sold on the basis of a proposal, which we hear was rather scanty and unimpressive. But maybe Joshua's a really kickass writer whose work is worth a ton of money. Let's dip into our own archives and see if we can come up with any evidence either way . . . ah, here we go. Joshua Foer, on Conor Oberst:
That first song, "The Big Picture," with its lo-fi hollering that sounds like it's pouring out of a blood-splattered shower, is both a self-referential homage to the raw pubescent angst that first brought a 13-year-old Oberst to the attention of the music establishment and a mature reflection on the album's central theme: the relationship between art and artifice.Fuck it, we're changing our last name to Foer, wiping our ass, and then selling the tp to the highest bidder. More »
sara gruen
Sara Gruen To Find Out What Happens When Monkeys Stop Being Polite, Start Getting Real
A tipster informs us that the author of summertime sleeper hit Water For Elephants has sold her next two books, the first of which, The Ape House, is about "monkeys who live together in a house," to Cindy Spiegel at Spiegel and Grau, for the highly improbable-seeming (but hey, whatever) sum of 5.2 million, making Joshua Foer's 1.2 million deal (a memoir which sold to Ann Godoff yesterday, and yes he's JSF's little bro) look like a bargain. Bookscan has Elephants at a totally respectable but not mindblowing 132,503 — Bookscan, of course, is always sorta wrong — and foreign rights to it sold all over the place. Still, 5.2 million for a follow-up to a book which — well, we'll let this book blogger sum it up: "the plot is non-existent, the characters are superficial, there is too much talk of penises and it is just a completely non-memorable basic quick read." So what we want to know is: really? And, if so, was it because of penises? Tell us.
brooklyn
Bookish Brooklyn Party to Feature Jonathans, Maclarens
Recipe for September 16 Brooklyn Book Fest: More »
jonathan safran foer
We're not normally in the business of alerting you to horrifying videos of mistreated animals — we prefer to limit ourselves to only presenting that sort of footage when it has to do with magazine assistants. So we'll spare you the graphic video we just watched about a kosher slaughterhouse, even if the footage is narrated by the eerily calm Jonathan Safran Foer ("These animals had their throats ripped out while they were still fully conscious"). More »
Jonathan Safran Foer Will Not Stop Until You Renounce Meat
We're not normally in the business of alerting you to horrifying videos of mistreated animals — we prefer to limit ourselves to only presenting that sort of footage when it has to do with magazine assistants. So we'll spare you the graphic video we just watched about a kosher slaughterhouse, even if the footage is narrated by the eerily calm Jonathan Safran Foer ("These animals had their throats ripped out while they were still fully conscious"). More »
new york post
The Simple Pleasure of a Luscious Lede
Too often, we find that an article doesn't live up to its promise. As journalists are wont to do, they reel us in with a fantastic lede, our panties get in a pleasant twist, and then — nothing. The article peaks with its first sentence, leaving us with little more than a crippling case of desire. More »
hotels
Remainders: Will Ferrell Still Alive!
• Will Ferrell did not die in a paragliding accident. And if he did, do you really think you'd hear about it through a barely literate press release? [Defamer]• So long as MTV-ready bands behave like this in Manhattan hotels, we'd rather sleep in our shoebox. Fucking trash monkeys, all of them. [Hotel Chatter]
• Ladies, prepare yourselves: Tomorrow is Steak and Blowjob day! Share it with the man you love, or at least one you don't mind sucking off. [SteakandBJDay]
• We can hardly fathom paying $82 for a stack of magazines. Make them a stack of bridal magazines, and you've the third ring of hell. [Bridal Blog]
• A Gay Clay is a defective one. [Got Detroit?]
• The bad thing about winning the U.S. Memory Championship is being unable to forget the reporter bugging you, that damn Foer kid. [Slate]
jonathan safran foer
