Jacob Silverman

I’ll be writing a column twice a month for Jewcy, about culture, media, matters Jewish and...

Wed, 09 May 2012 13:59:41 -0700

I’ll be writing a column twice a month for Jewcy, about culture, media, matters Jewish and everything in between. Here’s my first, about the miasma of grief on Twitter following celebrity deaths: “On Twitter, Grief is Just Another Meme.”

For Tablet magazine, I wrote about the attempt by Code Pink, the Center for Constitutional Rights,...

Tue, 08 May 2012 07:33:22 -0700

For Tablet magazine, I wrote about the attempt by Code Pink, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Reprieve UK to start an anti-drone campaign. They held a conference late last month in Washington, D.C., which I attended. Read the article here.

For Capital New York, I talked to Margaret Atwood about her new documentary, Payback, climate...

Wed, 02 May 2012 07:06:00 -0700

For Capital New York, I talked to Margaret Atwood about her new documentary, Payback, climate change, her thoughts on debt, and why she’s not an activist.

[photo by Bert Kaufman]

I won Jeopardy last night, making me a 3-day champion. I believe...

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 19:40:39 -0700

I won Jeopardy last night, making me a 3-day champion. I believe they’re airing Teen Tournament for a week (I really should know this, but I don’t), and then I’ll be back. Thanks for the comments on Twitter and elsewhere.

I won Jeopardy! last night. I’m back again tonight. 7pm...

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:38:45 -0700

I won Jeopardy! last night. I’m back again tonight. 7pm ABC.

I’m on Jeopardy! tomorrow night. 7pm, ABC.

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:49:02 -0700

I’m on Jeopardy! tomorrow night. 7pm, ABC.

Yesterday, The Daily Beast published my review of J.G. Ballard’s novel Kingdom Come. And for...

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:27:50 -0700

Yesterday, The Daily Beast published my review of J.G. Ballard’s novel Kingdom Come. And for Capital New York, I recently talked to Rajesh Parameswaran about his debut book, I Am an Executioner: Love Stories. Both books highly recommended.

For Capital New York, I wrote about why, despite being filled with violence, torture, abuse, and...

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 11:12:26 -0700

For Capital New York, I wrote about why, despite being filled with violence, torture, abuse, and brutish treatment of women, “Game of Thrones” still manages to be the best show on TV. Essentially, I think it comes down to the disconnect between the show’s 11th century morality and our own 21st century point of view, and what role fantasy may play in reconciling the two. Still, that by no means excuses some of the show’s issues with gender, sex, race, and representation; I try to sort through them here, and find that the show still has a long way to go in that regard. I’m looking forward to hearing what people think on this.

And at The Atlantic, I talked to Brian McGreevy about his vampire/werewolf/Frankenstein novel, Hemlock Grove, which will soon be an original Netflix series, under the aegis of Eli Roth.

For Capital New York, I wrote about why I think flash fiction is overrated, and why Etgar Keret is...

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:38:28 -0700

For Capital New York, I wrote about why I think flash fiction is overrated, and why Etgar Keret is a master of it:

Israeli writer Etgar Keret, whose latest short story collection, Suddenly, a Knock at the Door, is out today, is masterful at a genre—flash fiction—that has little to recommend it.

Defined as stories of 1,000 words or less, flash fiction has also spawned microfiction, hint fiction, short short fiction, and a host of other indistinguishable subtypes. Flash fiction is not really a new innovation—a hundred years ago, Franz Kafka and Robert Walser wrote pieces that could fit the label—but it’s the kind of cultural product that’s easily hawked as suited for our age.

[photo by gourbould]

Over the weekend, The Daily Beast published my review of Tom McCarthy’s Men in Space. At...

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 19:23:03 -0700

Over the weekend, The Daily Beast published my review of Tom McCarthy’s Men in Space.

At Capital New York, a couple recent dispatches: John Wray talking with Heidi Julavits about her latest novel, at the Center for Fiction; and Aleksandar Hemon and Nicole Krauss at BookCourt.

For Tablet, I reviewed ”Free Men,” about Muslim members of the French Resistance,...

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 12:08:24 -0700

For Tablet, I reviewed ”Free Men,” about Muslim members of the French Resistance, discussing the film in the context of recent revelations about NYPD surveillance and ethnic profiling.

Some Krasznahorkai Links

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 07:41:57 -0700

My review of Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s Satantango is in this weekend’s New York Times Book Review, so I thought I’d put together a list of links about the author and the novel.

BBC World interview with George Szirtes, Krasznahorkai’s English translator, talking about the author’s work and his collaborations with Bela Tarr.
At The Quarterly Conversation, David Auerbach’s essay, “The Mythology of Laszlo Krasznahorkai,” discussing the novels The Melancholy of Resistance and War and War.
“Something Is Burning Outside,” part of The Guardian’s series of short stories marking the fall of the Berlin Wall. This one is set at an artists’ retreat.
At Hungarian Literature Online, an interview with Barbara Epler, New Directions editor-in-chief, about publishing Krasznahorkai, literature in translation, and Bolaño.
Hungarian Quarterly’s interview with Krasznahorkai, in which he says that the Bible’s gotten bad PR and that he “can’t watch movies” (this despite the fact that he’s written screenplays for many of Bela Tarr’s films). Offers a good sense of his sensibility and his life in the Hungarian countryside.

The Devil They Know

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 09:03:49 -0700

I reviewed Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s Satantango for this weekend’s New York Times Book Review.

“Satantango,” the latest novel by the Hungarian writer Laszlo Krasznahorkai to be translated into English, takes place over a few rain-sodden days in a dying hamlet. The local estate has been closed, its animals hocked, its mill shut down. Perhaps a dozen residents remain. Like the surrounding buildings, they are rife with rot.

As in much of Krasznahorkai’s work, a sense of hallucinatory conspiracy is in the air. People speak ominously, if vaguely, about what lies ahead. They see visions and hear bells they can’t place. “If they read the papers properly,” one character says, “they would know that there is a real crisis out there.”

Read the rest here.

I talked to Hari Kunzru about the culture wars, traveling around the Mojave Desert, his decision to...

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 16:00:13 -0800

I talked to Hari Kunzru about the culture wars, traveling around the Mojave Desert, his decision to read from The Satanic Verses at the Jaipur Literary Festival, and his new novel, Gods Without Men, which is reviewed on the cover of this Sunday’s NYTBR. You can read my story at Capital New York.

For The Quarterly Conversation, I wrote about Lars Iyer and his...

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 20:23:00 -0800

For The Quarterly Conversation, I wrote about Lars Iyer and his novels Spurious and Dogma. Here’s one thing I had to say:

Iyer has written scabrous philosophical comedies about two men—W., a moderately successful writer and intellectual, and his layabout failure of a friend, Lars Iyer. The plots follow their delirious, often drunken, conversations about life, religion, and the end of the world (which they believe is soon approaching). They’re like two very well read David Mamet characters, skydiving without parachutes and laughing all the way down.

You can read all of what I had to say here. Also, check out the rest of issue 27 of TQC—tons of great stuff, with the usual emphasis on fiction in translation.

I talked to Adam Wilson, whose very funny debut novel, Flatscreen, is out now. You can read my...

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 07:22:42 -0800

I talked to Adam Wilson, whose very funny debut novel, Flatscreen, is out now. You can read my profile of Wilson at Capital New York.

For The National, I reviewed Krys Lee’s short story collection, Drifting House. I went to see...

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 13:31:52 -0800

For The National, I reviewed Krys Lee’s short story collection, Drifting House.

I went to see Belinda McKeon and Colm Tóibín at The Center for Fiction and wrote about it for Capital New York.

Over at Bookforum, I reviewed The Letter Killers Club by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky. Certain writers...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:13:47 -0800

Over at Bookforum, I reviewed The Letter Killers Club by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky.

Certain writers are too weird to fully belong to their own time. Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky—a Soviet writer obsessed with Kant and Shakespeare, whose own life barely rippled beyond a small coterie of Muscovite writers before his death in 1950—is among them. Krzhizhanovsky wrote philosophical works of fiction that veer between chattiness and, in the fine translations of Joanne Turnbull and Nikolai Formozov, unexpected elegance. They are tales of bodies suspended between life and death, of an animated Eiffel Tower that rampages across Europe, and of towns where dreams are made literal. To read these stories is to be buttonholed by a slightly mad but unfailingly interesting stranger desperate for a sympathetic ear. In Krzhizhanovsky, we find the aphorisms of a dime store philosopher and the polyphony of a schizophrenic.

Read the rest here.

In Tablet, I wrote about why Michael Chabon’s growing success as a screenwriter—he...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 09:28:45 -0800

In Tablet, I wrote about why Michael Chabon’s growing success as a screenwriter—he co-write “John Carter,” which Disney will release next month—may be bad news for fans of his fiction.

The circuitous return of Steven Van Zandt, wise guy (via Netflix, and Norwegian comedy) | Capital New York

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:01:00 -0800

The circuitous return of Steven Van Zandt, wise guy (via Netflix, and Norwegian comedy) | Capital New York:

For Capital New York, I reviewed “Lilyhammer,” the first original series from Netflix.