Matt Haber

Who is Rivka Galchen, M.D.? The author of Atmospheric Disturbances, which according to Leon Neyfakh is, "a winding, psychological quest story involving weather control, quantum theory, and an intricately calibrated, radically counterintuitive conception of space and time..." She also may be the new Thomas Pynchon. PLUS: The return of Mark Leyner.

Choire Sicha bravely asks, "Why can’t men write anymore?" According to Mr. Sicha, "A little penis, it turns out, can be a dangerous thing. But it’s not crazy at all to feel bad for the young male writers of our time, despite all they have done to us with their books. There are these legends that loom; all women, all terrifying."  read more »

The legend of Mark Leyner started small. It quickly grew out of control.

“I was an infinitely hot and dense dot. So begins the autobiography of a feral child who was raised by huge and lurid puppets. An autobiography written wearing wrist weights,” Mr. Leyner wrote in one of the riffs—“chapters” would be too conventional a description of his style—in his 1990 book, My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist.

Mr. Leyner, who lived in Hoboken, had already published I Smell Esther Williams, a collection of experimental stories that The Times called “prodigiously original.” My Cousin was met with similarly favorable reviews by critics, who saw in Mr. Leyner’s punctuation-flouting, form-bending, au courant prose a reflection of television’s growing influence on a new generation of writers. In 1992, just before the release of his third book, Et Tu, Babe, he was featured on the cover of The New York Times Magazine in a tank top, hoisting an inflatable dumbbell beside the cover line “Mark Leyner Is America’s Best-Built Comic Novelist.”  read more »

From the department of News You May Have Expected From an Unexpected Source, Perez Hilton has posted a press release announcing that Bonnie Fuller, AMI's Executive Vice President, Chief Editorial Director is stepping down from her management role as of May 14 and will become "editor-at-large" of AMI's Star magazine.  read more »

There were no surprises at 30 Rock today as NBC announced the new host of Late Night when current host Conan O'Brien decamps to 11:30 PM sometime in 2009. As far back as February 2007, Bill Carter, The New York Times' veteran TV reporter and de facto historian of late night, had been reporting that Saturday Night Live alum Jimmy Fallon would be tapped to host the show. As reporters and film crews assembled on the 67th floor to take their lucite seats in a room with floor-to-ceiling windows dramatically framing a rainy, overcast day, Fallon's name was openly bandied about.  read more »

02138, the lifestyle magazine for alumni who attended college "near Boston—um, in Cambridge" has been sold to Manhattan Media, publishers of The New York Press, City Hall, The Chelsea Clinton News, and other papers. O1238 was launched in 2006 with the backing of Atlantic Media's David Bradley.  read more »

Our Politicker colleague Jason Horowitz overheard an amusing thing in this morning's Clinton Conference call with Howard Wolfson.  read more »

Leon Neyfakh wonders who'll replace departing Random House CEO Peter Olson. "Regardless of whom Bertelsmann CEO Hartmut Ostrowski and his 15-person supervisory board appoint to replace Mr. Olson, it is all but certain that Random House will undergo some radical changes." Plus: James Frey.  read more »

Is Wired better than The New York Times? According to this year's Webby Awards, when it comes to Best Copy/Writing, it sure is.  read more »

Back in January, The Observer (okay, well, not the whole staff, just this reporter) profiled comedian and blogger whipping-boy David Cross. At the time, Mr. Cross had been caught up in a nasty spat with his so-called fans over his decision to take a role in Alvin and the Chipmunks. ("He's digging his own grave, professionally," wrote one of the more restrained commenters.)

"People genuinely don't like me," Mr. Cross told The Observer. "They find me arrogant and abrasive." Well, not everyone, it seems.  read more »

LAObserved's Kevin Roderick points us towards W's profile of Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington. Writer Diane Solway spends some time with Huffington, whom the magazine calls Poster Girl (get it?), but we were just interested in all the other people mentioned by name. (Except in the case of Huffington's household help and employees.)  read more »

Unfortunate headline of the week, courtesy of The Huffington Post's 'Living' section:

How To Throw A Killer Kentucky Derby Party

Of course, it should be noted that Marcy Blum's post went up a day before Eight Belles was euthanized following an injury.  read more »

Who will ensure Twitter tweets uninterrupted? That's the question posed by Silicon Alley Insider's Hank Williams about the popular wireless and web-based application that allows users to share their brain farts on the web in real time. Everyone from Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody ("I'm smoking Virginia Slims today. I've come a long way, baby," 06:43 PM May 03, 2008 from txt) to Slate's political correspondent John Dickerson ("At Dairy Queen with Clinton. She had Blizzard with Snickers I had" [sic.], about 17 hours ago from txt) has jumped on the Twitter bandwagon (bandtwagon?), but what if their tweets wind up in the dustbin of histowy?  read more »

What would former Seventeen editor and CosmoGIRL! founding editor Atoosa Rubenstein tell her younger self if she had the chance? Many, many are the times we've asked ourselves just that question.

Thankfully, Ellyn Spragins, editor of the "What I Know Now" series offers us a chance to get inside an intimate Atoosa-to-Atoosa, time-warping tête-à-tête in her new book, If I'd Only Known Then: Women in Their 20s and 30s Write Letters to Their Younger Selves (Da Capo, $18.00).  read more »

A little after 6 p.m. at the Frederick P. Rose Hall, Condé Nast president Richard Beckman was sharing a drink—vodka, olives—with Condé Nast CEO Chuck Townsend. The two were discussing the same thing everyone in the lobby of Jazz at Lincoln Center at the Time Warner Center was talking about: What the National Magazine Awards can do, or not do, for a magazine.  read more »

Last night, Vanity Fair contributing editor Buzz Bissinger appeared opposite—well, to the side of—Deadspin.com's Will Leitch on Bob Costas' Bob Castas Now in a special "Live Town Hall Edition." The show was billed as "Taking stock of the sports media landscape, including the rise of internet bloggers and sports talk radio."

It didn't go well, as this video (linked from Deadspin, of course) shows.

Warning: Language not "palatable" for work

Perhaps you've seen Scarlett Johansson's new video and were impressed by the actress-turned-singer's dirge-like cover of Tom Waits' "Falling Down."

The Daily Mail was less impressed by her singing than her co-star: Salman Rushdie. The author has a blink-and-miss-it cameo in the video nuzzling Ms. Johansson's hair and neck. (Who said writers have it tough?)  read more »

If you remember this year's White House Correspondent's Dinner, you weren't there. Felix Gillette, John Koblin, and Choire Sicha flood the zone in D.C..

Janet Silver is moving from Houghton Mifflin to Nan Talese's imprint at Doubleday. Leon Neyfakh checks in with with Ms. Talese who says, "I called Janet and she sent us a list of the authors she had worked with and the ones who’d said they wanted to come with her, if not immediately then eventually." That list may include Philip Roth and Jonathan Safran Foer. Plus: Islam observers on Wieseltier's Amis review; James Frey's PR Dream Team; Spitzer's bio; Nabokov's unfinished novel.  read more »

The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg—who joined the magazine from The New Yorker last year—has started a blog.

His first entry, which features an endearingly retro Public Enemy reference as its title, begins with the self-effacing words, "This is almost certainly a mistake." Well, it can't be as big a mistake as championing the invasion of Iraq relying (according to Harper's Ken Silverstein), "heavily on administration sources and war hawks (and in at least one crucial case, a fabricator)."

In March, Goldberg offered a mea culpa on Slate:

I wanted very much for the liberation of Iraq to succeed, for many reasons. I wasn't sure there was an alternative to Saddam's removal, in part because the sanctions regime was collapsing. I believed that Saddam's nuclear ambitions posed an almost immediate threat to national security. I believed that Saddam was a supporter of terrorism.  read more »

As you may have already read, Miley Cyrus is totally embarrassed by the semi-topless (back view) photos printed of her in this month's Vanity Fair. In a statement put out by her publicist, Ms. Cyrus, age 15, said, "I took part in a photo shoot that was supposed to be 'artistic' and now, seeing the photographs and reading the story, I feel so embarrassed... I never intended for any of this to happen and I apologize to my fans who I care so deeply about."

Representatives of the magazine responded that during Annie Liebovitz's shoot, "Miley's parents and/or minders were on the set all day... Since the photo was taken digitally, they saw it on the shoot and everyone thought it was a beautiful and natural portrait of Miley."

This isn't the first time a star has felt stung by VF. Dewey ingenues like Lindsay Lohan and Paul Wolfowitz have complained of being misquoted and beloved icons like Courtney Love and Paris Hilton blame the magazine for their subsequent vilification. Here, a look back in anger, denial, and occasional admission.  read more »

Tomorrow night marks the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington, D.C. Members of the press corps (including some Media Mob contributors who are already on their way—note low posting rate today!) will have a chance to clink glasses with the president and his cabinet and remind themselves that despite five years of war, an economy some are already calling a Depression, and a painful slog of an election season, it's all in good fun. L'chaim! To us!

This year's event will be emceed by CBS Late Late Show host Craig Ferguson, whom the W.H.C.A.'s president (and ABC News correspondent), Ann Compton, is really excited about: "Craig Ferguson is a fresh take on late night TV. As a new citizen, a first-time uncommitted voter and someone who has looked at American politics from the outside, I am looking forward to his unique take on our system."

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Portfolio's Jeff Bercovici talks with Jane Cox MacElree, a member of the Bancroft family who didn't mince words about the firing of The Wall Street Journal managing editor, Marcus Brauchli:

This is why I was not in favor of selling the paper to that man. Words mean nothing to him, unless they're his... It's over and done with, and there's no point in going on about it, in my opinion... I just feel bad for Marcus.

Lose an editor; gain a media property. John Koblin details every maneuver in one very busy week for Rupert Murdoch. This piece has everything: The Wall Street Journal, Marcus Brauchli, Newsday, The New York Times, and Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.  read more »

And how was your day? If you're a media critic or reporter, it was anything but slow.

Starting last night when "Time Reporters" broke the news that Wall Street Journal managing editor Marcus Brauchli would be leaving the paper followed closely by The Wall Street Journal's Merissa Marr reporting Sam Zell's Tribune Co. was "closing in on an agreement to sell its Long Island newspaper Newsday" to her paper's parent company, News Corp., this was a day of constant scoops and fast (sometimes loose) seat-of-the-pants analysis.  read more »

And here's that Susan Glasser update we promised. Adding to Michael Calderone's Politico report that The Washington Post's Assistant Managing Editor Susan Glasser had been let go, The New York Times' David Stout confirms that she was removed "because of poor morale among her subordinates." (In an update to his original item, Calderone wrote, "Glasser’s bedside manner was a problem" and that some Posties "appeared joyous at the news" of her departure.)

In a repeatedly updated post on Mediabistro's FishbowlDC, Patrick W. Gavin gives a timeline of Glasser's career at The Post, while in a blog post on his paper's site, City Paper's Eric Wemple has promised he will be "aggressively updating this story" as it continues.

Politico's Michael Calderone is reporting that Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Susan Glasser is being replaced by Rajiv Chandrasekaran.

According to a 'Dept. of Media' column by Eric Wemple in The Washington City Paper from July 18, 2007, "Ever since [her hiring], Glasser’s boss can’t stop talking about her vision. 'Susan is one of our most talented and visionary journalists,' said Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. at the time. In a recent interview, he said, 'Susan has a strong vision and that is one of the reasons she got this job, and I’m pleased to see that she’s carrying it out.'"  read more »

Finally! In today's Times 'Arts, Briefly' Motoko Rich reports that teen triple-threat supernova Miley Cyrus will tell all in "a book about her early life in Tennessee, her move to Los Angeles and the influence of her parents — especially her mother — on her success."

The book, which will be out in time to qualify for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize and National Book Awards, was sold to Disney-Hyperion Books for seven figures and have an initial print run of a million copies. (Since neither Ms. Cyrus or her alter-ego, Hannah Montana is a citizen of the Commonweath or the Republic of Ireland she will not be eligible for the Mann Booker Prize.)

Ms. Rich quotes Disney Book Group publisher Jeanne Mosure as saying, "It’s rare that you hear from someone her age that they want to talk about their family... How she sees her family in light of everything that she’s exposed to on a daily basis is pretty incredible.”

It should be noted that exposed is probably not the best word to use this week.

(via The Huffington Post.)

In honor of tomorrow's inaugural Record Store Day, a national promotion-cum-celebration of independent music outlets, The New York Times' Ben Sisario offers this sad lament: "Now added to the endangered species list in New York City, along with independent booksellers and shoe repair: the neighborhood record store." Along with Mr. Sisario's article, the Times helpfully ran a map of New York record stores, which can be used like a Birder's Guide to this dying breed.

But unlike Earth Day, that other awareness-raising holiday celebrated next week, which inspires publications to roll out obligatory tributes and calls-to-arms in honor of a once thriving, now dying icon (that would be the Earth, thank you very much), the Times is anything but a once-a-year designated mourner when it comes to record stores. In fact, for years, the decline of record stores has been a serious and growing concern for the paper, and something of a pet cause.  read more »

By now you know that Dave Eggers can do almost anything. But, according to an interview on Vanity Fair's VF Daily with singer-songwriter Aimee Mann, the author, publisher, charity head, and screenwriter cannot whistle. At least not the right kind of whistle.

VF's Jim Windolf and Ms. Mann had the following exchange in which she revealed Mr. Eggers' less than stellar whistling acumen:

I read that Dave Eggers does the whistling on the song “Little Tornadoes.” Is that right?

[Laughs.] Well, technically, there may be some Dave Eggers on there. It’s funny, because I did this show—he has this charity, a tutoring program called 826 Valencia, and I’ve done a bunch of benefits for them—and I heard him whistling backstage. I was like, “Dude, wow, you can really whistle!” He was this sort of awesome whistler. So like a year later I needed whistling on this song, so I said, “You gotta come down and whistle on this song.” And then we realized his style of whistling is not, like, melancholy enough. It has a lot of vibrato and it’s sort of jaunty. It’s fantastic, but it didn’t really fit. And the other thing you realize is that just because somebody can whistle doesn’t mean they can necessarily whistle the melody that you are trying to get them to whistle. So there’s some Dave Eggers whistling, but there’s some that had to be replaced.

Today's Page Six features an unusual phrase rarely seen in its home paper: "The Post regrets the error."

The normally biting gossip column regrets its report from March 25 that Cashmere Mafia creator Darren Star had "swiped" the premise for his ABC show from his former Sex and the City collaborator (and Observer alum) Candace Bushnell, who was developing her book Lipstick Jungle into a very similar show for NBC. (The March 25th item is cached here.) Today, the Post says:

WE reported on March 25 that TV producer Darren Star swiped the idea for "Cashmere Mafia" from Candace Bushnell, producer of "Lipstick Jungle." In fact, we were mistaken. Star was approached with the idea by ABC. The two shows were conceived independently.  read more »

Junot You Can't Wait Amazon's Omnivoracious blog has an interview with Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz (Does he still smile every time he hears that?) and an excerpt from a work-in-progress he's calling Dark America. New York's Vulture Blog (which tipped us off to the link) says "It's pretty rad..."

Mixed Wingnuts Writer Roy Edroso compiles The Official Village Voice Election- Season Guide to the Right-Wing Blogosphere for the New York alt.weekly. Notables include Rod Dreher ("Cheerful when discussing food or “sluts”; otherwise, grimly millenarian"); Jonah Goldberg ("Goldberg's comical persona—once pretty much all he had—is now mainly a fallback position in his attempts at serious commentary."); and the always fun Michelle Malkin ("STUPID/EVIL RATIO: 97/3").

I Love the 80s Newsweek's Jonathan Alter talks to Mediabistro's Kathryn Carlson and shares this career high: "When I started covering the media in 1984, there were very few media critics in the United States. At one point, I was named one of the top ten media critics in America and my parents were very pleased—but I had to tell them that there were only ten media critics in America."  read more »

Felix Gillette braves the crowds outside NBC's Today Show to find Katie Couric's most loyal fans. "'Katie’s hot,' said Craig Bellew, who was visiting from Clarkesville, Ga. 'She should come right back here. I grew up watching her on Today. And it’s easier to say her name then—what’s the other girl’s name? Anyway. She’s hot.'

Speaking of Ms. Couric, John Koblin looks at how a whiff of a story (Katie Out at CBS?) becomes conventional wisdom in our Print 2.0 world. The New York Times. 'It used to be you came in the next day and your editor would say, "Well, we won today," or she’d say, "Looks like we got beat like a drum," and that would be the end of it. Now it’s this ongoing game of catching up and staying ahead.'"  read more »

Did The Real World beget Facebook? That's the theory put forth by Details' Jeff Gordinier in his think piece on MTV's ur-reality series which is in its improbable twentieth season.

After explaining how the series created "a New America," Gordinier writes:

In 1995 a paperback titled The Real Real World was published to capitalize on the success of the first four seasons of the show: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and London. A few pages were devoted to the cast members from each season, studded with grainy snapshots and factoids. Flip through the book today and contemplate Kat’s favorite song (“Africa,” by Toto), Puck’s favorite snack (“Nuts, exotic ones”), and Becky’s preferred mode of transportation (“I usually walk”), and it doesn't take long to realize that you’re looking at an early, analog blueprint for a social-networking site: the beta version of Facebook. “We’re living in an age where everyone has to be famous,” [MTV's Brian] Graden says. “There’s a current belief that every small thing I do is fascinating, so I’m going to share it with all my friends."  read more »

Is Chris Matthews serious about running for Arlen Specter's Senate seat? When asked if he planned to run for office on last night's Colbert Report, the host of MSNBC's Hardball was uncharacteristically at a loss for words. In fact, to watch the video, he looked momentarily stricken.

The Huffington Post quotes Mr. Matthews as telling Mr. Colbert, "Did you ever want to be something your whole life, besides this? When you grow up, some kids want to be a fireman. I want to be a Senator."  read more »

Is This Thing On? Time's James Poniewozik put out a call to his readers for their reactions to VH1's Rock of Love. "I'm not really qualified to hold forth on VH1's Rock of Love II, having joined the series for, oh, about the last half-hour of the finale (I won't spoil, don't worry). But it seems like the sort of show that inspires, um, passions, so I'll throw this thread open to your opinions on Bret's choice between Daisy and Ambre," he writes. As of now, only one person's responded and that's to praise the amazing talent of ... Paul Giamatti?

Inside Baseball: Also in Time, Michael Kinsley exposes the long-simmering feud between writers and editors and offers "an apology to any writers I may have treated callously over my years as an editor. If I didn't answer your e-mail, I'm sorry. If the check was late or the amount less than agreed on, please forgive me." He also asserts that "On the Internet, they don't have editors," which is more or less what Ken Auletta fretted about twelve years ago in a New Yorker profile of Mr. Kinsley called "The Re-Education of Michael Kinsley" in which he wrote, "If [Esther] Dyson's guess—and it can be only that—is correct, then Kinsley the editor is destined to become another middleman, another roadkill in the abyss of cyberspace." (Remember 'cyberspace'?)  read more »

It's been a great week for The Washington Post's Dana Priest. First, she was awarded her second Pulitzer Prize in three years (in collaboration with Anne Hull and photographer Michel du Cille) in the category of Public Service for a series about soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital.

Yesterday, Variety's Michael Fleming reported that the series has been optioned by HBO Films. According to Larry Lyttle, one of the executive producers of the project, "The film will be about how four ordinary people, who put their lives on the line for their country, came back injured and were then abused and ignored by the crown jewel of the military." The teleplay will be written by Ron Nyswaner, who has been nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay for Philadelphia.

Here we go! Variety's Dave NcNary reports that MGM has purchased a spec script called Bobism by TV writer Ben Wexler. The plot involves "a shy collegian who discovers that life in 1,000 years will be based on his blog."

The Hollywood Reporter's Borys Kit adds a few more plot details: "He also finds out that aliens from the future want to kill him and prevent that utopia from happening." Kit quotes producer Tripp Vinson, who says, "Ben Wexler found a way to cleverly combine comedy, action and sci-fi genres and play them real."

Another producer on the project, Beau Flynn offers this high-high-concept pitch: "If 'Midnight Run' and 'Terminator' got married and birthed a 'Superbad' child, this would be that movie."

Things are getting a bit heated over at the Huffington Post.

Yesterday, Erica Jong called out Rolling Stone's political correspondent Matt Taibbi for making a joke about Hillary Clinton's (allegedly) flabby arms in an April 3 RS column. "Physical mockery ended in seventh grade, I thought—but apparently not where women pols are concerned," Ms. Jong wrote in a piece headlined Misogyny, Momism and Militarism. "I find it bizarre that a grown man would invoke a physical put-down in an opinion piece. It smacks of a complex of some sort."  read more »

Just a quick note to media moguls who might get a little too tipsy mixing medication and alcohol and tell a journalist that they killed a man (no judgments, it happens to everyone): Get a good flack.

Felix Dennis, the Charles Foster Kane of lad mags, made that mistake with The Times' Ginny Dougary in an April 2 profile, only to deny it a short time later. (One does such things when those pesky police officers begin looking into one's claim.)

Anyway, in today's New York Post, Keith Kelly quotes Drew Kerr, Mr. Dennis' U.S. spokesman, as saying:

Felix has killed many people with his jokes and he has certainly killed a few magazines along the way—his own and others—but as for human beings, that's ridiculous.

Ha... Ha?

Who says The Newseum, Washington D.C.'s interactive showcase for journalism and home to Ana Marie Cox's slippers (seriously) can't draw a crowd?  read more »

Hath Not a Jew Ears? New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier attempts to answer to a question you've probably never asked yourself: Can A Jew Enjoy The Sound Of Church Bells? (Spoiler Alert: yes.)

Cos Célèbre: Ta-Nehisi Coates examines entertainer-turned-activist Bill Cosby's brand of post-Civil Rights empowerment philosophy in The Atlantic. "From Birmingham to Cleveland and Baltimore, at churches and colleges, Cosby has been telling thousands of black Americans that racism in America is omnipresent but that it can’t be an excuse to stop striving," writes Coates. "As Cosby sees it, the antidote to racism is not rallies, protests, or pleas, but strong families and communities."  read more »

The new issue of World Affairs ("A Journal of Ideas and Debate") features a short travelogue by P. J. O'Rourke called The Cleveland of Asia: A Journey Through China’s Rust Belt. In 2006, Mr. O'Rourke, a Cato Institute fellow and Atlantic correspondent, spent a month in China, visiting factories, Xi'an's famous Terra Cotta Warriors, the Three Gorges Dam and other charming locales to see how the place had changed since he was last there, in 1997, producing insights like the following: "The enormous dam was enormous. The scenic Three Gorges were scenic. And the mucky-looking reservoir that's filling the gorges looked mucky."

Mostly, it seems that Mr. O'Rourke was driven around in sleek black cars, invited to a lot of boozy meals by various factory owners and businesspeople (as well as someone who may have been Chinese secret police) and had a good time coming up with observational humor bits about Chinese people and Westerners that run along the lines of, "A white person eats like this. ... But a Chinese person eats like this!"  read more »