sunday reads

Sunday Reads: Jonathan Franzen, D’Angelo, and Moonrise Kingdom Prep

D’Angelo’s ‘GQ’ cover. Photo: Gregory Harris/GQ

It’s Sunday afternoon, or: Your last chance to read all that stuff you meant to read last week before Monday (or in this case, Tuesday) brings a new deluge of things you will want to read. Below, some of our recommendations:

What Your Favorite Wes Anderson Movie Says About You,” by Richard Lawson and Jen Doll (The Atlantic Wire): Self-explanatory, really, not to mention something to contemplate going into Moonrise Kingdom.

Jonathan Franzen: The Path to Freedom,” by Jonathan Franzen (Guardian): The Corrections author answers — at length — “four unpleasant questions novelists get asked,” so no one ever has to ask him those again! Then, he describes the breakup of his marriage, and the challenge of combining autobiography and fiction.

Amen! (D’Angelo’s Back),” by Amy Wallace (GQ): We may have already mentioned it this week, but this thorough, sometimes quite dark chronicle of D’Angelo’s descent into addiction and return to the stage (and, for the first time in 12 years, studio) will be of interest to anyone who ever saw the video for “Untitled,” which is pretty much everyone.

Noomi Rapace Arrives in Hollywood, by Way of Outer Space,” by Karen Olsson (The New York Times Magazine): The original Lisbeth Salander from Girl With the Dragon Tattoo reveals that Rapace is actually a made-up name, the story of how she played a deranged baby-killing mother when her own son was just two years old, and how growing up in a Down syndrome colony in Iceland informs her new role in Ridely Scott’s upcoming Alien precursor, Prometheus.

Susan Sontag on Movies: For Interpretation,” by Richard Brody (Page Turner/The New Yorker): The New Yorker’s film critic takes stock of the literary icon’s “strangely, anachronistically narrow views on the cinema,” including her in-depth discussions of Godard and her aversion to Hollywood fare.

Man of War,” by Stephen Metcalf (Slate): Paul Fussell, WWII infantryman and University of Pennsyvlvania English professor, who died this week, is remembered for his part in ushering out pre-war literary abstraction and welcoming the “blood, terror, agony, madness, shit, cruelty, murder, sell-out, pain and hoax” of the real 20th century.

This Is What Happens When You Loop the Billboard Top 10 for 10 Straight Hours,” by Rembert Browne (Grantland): Will your secret inability to stop listening to “Somebody That I Used To Know” eventually cause actual brain damage? Find out here.

Eurovision Song Contest: ‘It’s soft politics, but it’s politics’,” by Tim Hume (CNN): Between the waving flags, flaring geopolitical spats, and voting blocs playing the “anyone but England or France” game, Eurovision is all politics. And you thought it was just a very weird music competition (if you thought about it at all, you ugly American).

Sunday Reads: Franzen, D’Angelo, Moonrise Prep