Literary blogs / Paper Cuts

I've spent a lot time comb­ing through the archives of Paper Cuts, the blog of the New York Times Book Review edi­tor Dwight Gar­ner. It steers clear of smar­ty­pantsness, focus­ing on what one might call the lighter side of seri­ous lit­er­a­ture. In fact, most of the con­tent is on the periph­ery of the strict­ly lit­er­ary — a music playlist assem­bled by Miran­da July, a quick, fun inter­view with Judy Blume, a scan of Jack Kerouac's obit­u­ary ("his sub­ject was him­self and his method was to write as spon­ta­neous­ly as pos­si­ble"), a scan of an ad for Ralph Ginzburg's lit­er­ary super­no­va Avant Garde that looks like the label on a Dr. Bronner's soap bot­tle. Gar­ner also has a pod­cast in which he inter­views authors and review­ers from cur­rent and upcom­ing Book Reviews. Every once in a while, you'll suf­fer through some crap (e.g., Frank Rich gush­ing and gig­gling while furtive­ly and unsuc­cess­ful­ly try­ing to hide the king-size man-crush he has on Don DeLil­lo). That said, most of the pod­casts are infor­ma­tive and inter­est­ing.The image at right is from a slide show of adver­tise­ments that appeared dur­ing the "gold­en age" of the NYT Book Review — 1962–1973.