Welcome to a new column in which one of our intrepid interns pounds the pavement, asking a burning literary question on everyone's mind. This week, we asked unsuspecting strangers who rocked a white turtleneck better: fresh-faced heartthrob Justin Bieber or bearded he-man Ernest Hemingway?
Read MoreFor every Beiber and Boo Boo, there's a handful of genuinely good shows, bands, books and blogs you may skip over simply because they’re marketed towards the younger set. To keep you “jiggy” (am I saying that right?) with today’s youth, here are five of the best things out there that may have flown under your radar.
Read MoreIf brevity is truly the soul of wit, then your Twitter feed is the Algonquin round table of today's digital Dorothy Parkers and Ogden Nashes. Here's a selection of our favorite tweets from the week; nominate yours by submitting to @blackballoonpub with #twitwit.
Read MoreGeorge Saunders, whose new short story collection, Tenth of December, has already dashed the hopes of just about anyone publishing a book this year, is currently taking a victory lap through New York. Whether you're a first-time visitor to GeorgeSaundersLand or a seasoned explorer, here’s a handy guide to a few of the pyrotechnic author’s greatest hits, complete with links to longer reads.
Read MoreCan Scrabble be considered the quintessential American sport, more so than football? Play along with me as I reconstruct a heated game from a recent NASPA tournament, and discover how to take the game beyond your smartphone.
Read MoreEveryone from Galileo to Jim Morrison to countless Scrabble wordsmiths have played around with letters to form their perfect anagrams. We take literary-minded words and anagram them to find ... well, that's up to you. A deeper meaning? A hidden truth? Or just a happy coincidence?
Read MoreFrom zombie romance to the science of sound, the stories in Manuel Gonzales's debut collection, The Miniature Wife and Other Stories, have a funny way of creeping into the reader's daily life. Here are just a few of the things you might find yourself doing after reading Gonzales's masterfully inventive (and ultimately grounded) stories.
Two events are converging this week: the arrival of George Saunders' new book, Tenth of December, which the Times has already called “The Best Book You’ll Read This Year,” and the initial descent of our New Year's resolutions into secret shame and self-loathing. I thought it’d be apt to collect some Saunders quotes that illustrate our most popular resolutions — and the failure and small victories that shadow them.
Read MoreMeredith Ries, a set designer currently in her final year at the Yale School of Drama, is writing a multi-part series about her design process for Hamlet at the Yale Repertory Theater, opening in the spring of 2013. In this second installment, she shares photos and stories (and blisters) from the model-building process.
Read MoreIf you're 5’2” or under, you know what it's like to attend a concert, buzzing with the excitement of seeing your favorite band of the week, only to spend the next three hours staring at someone’s sweat-streaked back. I vowed to help my fellow shortstacks, so here is a guide to some of the city’s music venues and what the vertically challenged can expect from them.
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