The Culture Czar

Farrar, Straus and Giroux editor Lorin Stein has been wanting to publishing Russian writer Vladimir Sorokin for years, but until now could not find a work of his that could be translated easily enough into English.

That changed this week, Mr. Stein told Media Mob, with FSG planning to publish a short volume tentatively titled A Day in the Life of an Oprichnik in the near future. Mr. Stein compared the book to A Clockwork Orange, describing it as a satirical novel set in 2028 that follows a protagonist who's basically a henchman to a Putin-like dictator ruling over a Russia which has walled itself off from the rest of the world.  read more »

Ah, now that Michael Wolff has released his new biography on Rupert Murdoch, The Man Who Owns the News, it was just about time for him to babble some highly quotable comment and drum up some press for it: like, say, "MySpace users are [expletive] cretins."

His friend, Jon Fine of BusinessWeek, took the author out to dinner and discussed a subject he doesn't go into depth in his new book: MySpace.

Apparently, Mr. Murdoch and pals aren't too happy with it.

MW: ...I think it is--if you’re on MySpace now, you’re a [expletive] cretin. And you’re not only a [expletive] cretin, but you’re poor.

 read more »

German electropop innovators Kraftwerk claimed proudly in their heyday some decades ago that the robotic sound of their music was not enough: they wanted to become robots. On Akon's latest album, "Freedom," out today, the Senegalese-raised, Atlanta-based singer has brought that dream to R&B, though in his case, automatism isn't the end in itself, just trendiness.

Along with Kanye West, T-Pain, and Lil Wayne (among an ever-expanding list of hip-hop and R&B stars), Akon soaks his vocals with the digital sheen of Autotune. Meanwhile the backing tracks consist mainly of slickly minimal, synth-driven beats. So despite the fact that this is perhaps his most emotionally raw material to date, it's never sounded so inhuman.  read more »

It’s safe to say Alan McGee has a decent track record when it comes to naming the next big thing. As co-founder and long-time head of Creation Records, McGee was responsible for much of the early success of bands like the Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Primal Scream, and most notably, Oasis. In short, McGee jumpstarted the drug-addled mix of rave culture and post-punk that defined the frantic creativity of British pop during the late 80s and early 90s.

Which is why our interest was piqued when Mr. McGee went and named “the best unsigned band in the world” on his Guardian blog today. They’re called the Grants, they’re from Liverpool, and according to McGee, they could become “one of the few bands in the history of Liverpool - after Echo and the Bunnymen - to step out of the shadows of the Beatles.”  read more »

The Associated Press' Hillel Italie is reporting that Rebecca Saletan, who became publisher of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt when the company's component parts were merged by the Irish multimedia firm in January, has resigned from her position and will serve out her last day on December 10th. Ms. Saletan's departure will come two weeks after Publishers Weekly reported that the editors who report to her had been told to stop acquiring new books because there was not enough room for them in the budget.   read more »

It looks like Shia LaBeouf is one step closer to becoming the next Tom Cruise, but hopefully without all that pesky Scientology/alien baby excess baggage. The young star has just signed on to Paramount's upcoming adaptation of John Grisham's latest novel, The Associate, which hits stores just in time for the last weekend in January. (Note to Doubleday: release John Grisham books for the holidays, so people will buy them as gifts.) Anyway! The Associate follows a young Yale Law School graduate (to be played by Mr. LaBeouf) who gets blackmailed by some shady characters into giving away case secrets at the law firm where he's an associate (hence the title). If this sounds strikingly familiar, it's because we're pretty sure that is the same description for The Firm.  read more »

As we anxiously await the release of Steven Soderbergh's Che--the four-hour epic begins a limited one week engagement at the IFC Center starting on December 12th before coming back around in January--isn't it time we got an update on the craziest/awesomest project that the talented director has ever come up with? Of course we're talking about Cleo, the 3-D musical that Mr. Soderbergh is planning about Cleopatra, featuring songs by Guided by Voices and hopefully starring Catherine Zeta-Jones in the title role and Hugh Jackman as Marc Antony. Thanks to MTV, we've gotten more details than ever about the film, which Mr. Soderbergh says he's "totally psyched" to do.

For starters, he's actually going to make Cleo--shooting is scheduled to start sometime in April. In the world of Hollywood, where directors like Martin Scorsese pile up projects without ever actually getting to them, this is actually a bit of good news.  read more »

Apparently, Britney Spears took a stroll on the streets of New York last night while her newsless, yet somehow touching documentary For the Record aired on MTV.

She updated her Twitter just a few minutes ago:

britneyspears I enjoyed a relaxing walk last night around NYC. Even though it was raining, it was a lot of fun! ~Britney

This might actually be the real Britney too. Her assistant Lauren, usually signs off on posts she writes, and Brit has been updating as herself for awhile now.

Last week, Scott Heiferman, C.E.O. of Meetup, announced when and where candidates could announce their interest in replacing him as organizer of the New York Tech Meetup. So far, several candidates have stepped forward, including Greg Magarshak, founder of social media company Lucky Apps; Joe DiPasquale, founder of CollegeWikis.com and self-described Meetup fanatic; Rich Hecker, an organizer of Bootstrapper.com and co-founder of The Connectors Group, a new angel investment group, and Groupable.com, a site that works a lot like Meetup; Joshua Sherman, an organizer of Personal Democracy Forum and founder of BuycottForChange.org; among others.

What does the tech community think so far? The blogs are abuzz.  read more »

Via Keith Gessen's tumblr, a video of New Yorker literary critic James Wood doing something no one could have guessed he knows how to do.