"Wait, Franco's in this? I love that guy!" — Kim Jong-Un

Not to mention inspirational for young would-be indie filmmakers.

"Earthy flavored-blend, hints of oak and apple in the aftertaste, traces of shit."

A chapter in his book Shock Value is called "Hillbilly Ripoffs," and I've always been disappointed he never made a movie titled Hillbilly Ripoffs.

To be fair, his first language was Chinese.

"Oh Joel, this is going to turn into a snuff film, isn't it?"

Pre- or post-syphilis?

"I don't even know what street Canada's on." — Al Capone

You missed Bozo in Buchenwald, huh?

That's the scariest scene in a comedy show ever.

I'm intrigued about Slater doing yellowface. This is about the whole North Korean thing, right? So who plays Franco?

Meet the brand-new Potterverse Superfriends!

Interestingly, I had the opposite reaction— during the opening journal section I mistook the narrative voice for Bolano's (I'd never read him before) in autobiographical mode and was starting to get weary of it. Then the interviews kicked in and I thought, "Oh, hey, wait, there's a lot more going on here."

I wouldn't claim it as a masterpiece, but i found it solid and convincing in a voice and style quite different than Nabokov's, with real emotional shadings. I don't know if it could stand on its own, but its reality is essential to the novel and makes a beautiful foil to Kinbote's ramblings.

There's a lot to discover with Bolano. I also read his Nazi Literature of the Americas, which is a wicked, funny satire of right-wing South (and North) American literary figures, written as a faux biographical dictionary. I got the feeling some of the satire was lost on me because I didn't know the Latin literary…

The book is so Byzantine and volcanic that it's hard to know what "completion" really would add. With something like Wallace's The Pale King you can see that Wallace hadn't yet found the way it all fit together, so all you have are these brilliant fragments. With this one, like Kafka's Trial, it's clear the author…

My book of the year was 2666. Allegedly unfinished, though you'd never know it. Bolano was clearly a mammoth talent who died (like D. F. Wallace) way too soon. Amazing, exhausting, truly visionary.

The great thing about Pale Fire is that the poem is so good as a real poem— written in character as John Shade by Nabokov. One great way to read the book is as Kinbote suggests in the introduction— start with the endnotes, then read the poem, referring back to the endnotes as you go. It makes the book much funnier…

Hey, I like any movie about fish.

"The most important movie you'll see this year." — Glenn Beck