BULLETT

Today in culture: Brian De Palma’s Passion gets slammed, the Coolidge Effect is linked to porn, and The Dud Avocado gets a second glimpse.

-The “liary” of Anais Nin: how far can (or should) personal truth be stretched?

-Hitchens on Warhol: An excerpt from the late essayist’s collection Arguably.

-How to be an artist. Or at least, how to avoid being an amateur.

-”The short answer is Yes. The long answer is boring”- a Joshua Cohen Q&A.

-”The Dud Avocado is not a story about an innocent abroad who is thwarted by society and punished with death or spinsterhood. It is not a novel about a charming call girl…It is not a fluffy confection about professional woes and the search for a husband.” How Elaine Dundy’s novel, enjoying a brief moment in the sun thanks to Lena Dunham’s endorsement, is the ultimate chick-lit.

-This just in: everyone hates Brian De Palma’s Passion.

-Troubling clip of the day: how porn and the Coolidge Effect go hand in hand.

-Aleksandar Hemon on the Tykwer-Wachowski’s epic Cloud Atlas adaptation.

-Zadie Smith on the politics of N.W.: “I just wanted to try and create perhaps a sense of alienation and otherness in this person, the white reader, to remind them that they are not neutral to other people.”