BULLETT

Today in culture: Chris Marker, the most elusive of the French New Wave filmmakers, dies at 91, Jonah Lehrer gets his comeuppance, and Odd Future responds to Frank Ocean’s carb cravings.

-Chris Marker has died, leaving behind a strange and powerfully influential body of work. The auteur whose short films La Jetee (1962) and Sans Soleil (1983) became landmarks of experimental–not mention science fiction–film history. Marker tried his darndest not to allow photographs to be taken of him from the start of his career. To Alain Resnais, he was the ‘prototype of the 19th century man’.

-Jonah Lehrer quits the New Yorker after being called out for making shit up about Bob Dylan in his book Imagine: How Creativity Works. Is it Stephen Glass all over again, or will Lehrer be welcomed back into the journalistic bosom? Only time will tell.

-Saucy book cover of the day: Kingsley Amis’ (father of Martin) Lucky Jim, 1954.

-Our Summer issue fiction contributor, Joshua Cohen, gets a notice in the Times for his new short story collection, Four New Messages. “Mr. Cohen is arch,” writes Dwight Garner, “and archness can chafe.” Funny, we hadn’t noticed.

-Taking the interview out of the long profile. Slate takes a look at longform articles that are made up of conjecture, close observation, and of course, stalking, starting with Gay Talese’s seminal “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold”.

-What is Parvenucracy? A study (yes, another one, but this time it’s actually intellectual and interesting and serious) of Downton Abbey.

-Ryan McGinley and Gus Van Sant talk about youth and beauty at AnOther magazine.

-Todd Haynes in conversation with Mark Friedberg, and Sandy Powell at the MOMI blog.

-Alan Hollinghurst on Peter Carey’s The Chemistry of Tears.

-Happy-making clip of the day: the rest (or some others) of Odd Future address Frank Ocean’s coming out on MTV (it’s not what you think).