The name Rick Moody will be familiar to anyone who keeps current with American writing. He’s the recipient of several awards and fellowships, including the Pushcart Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship and the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir, and his lauded 1994 novel The Ice Storm was filmed by director Ang Lee. Moody is hanging around the MAGNET shop this week mostly because of his side job as one-quarter of the Wingdale Community Singers, a remarkable collection of writers, musicians and artists of varying stripes. Once pegged as an “urban folk” group that wrote old-timey songs about modern topics such as cross-dressers and funky Brooklyn culture, the Wingdales just released their second album, Spirit Duplicator, on the Scarlet Shame label. In addition to his writing and recording projects, Moody is guest editing magnetmagazine.com this week. Read our Q&A with him.
Moody: This is on the list because hipsters don’t read enough. Joy Williams is one of the very greatest contemporary fiction writers, and this is among her very greatest books. Read more. And not just Cormac McCarthy. If you don’t, you’re just giving away your cultural acreage to a system that would have you doped and unable to challenge it, to mount a significant defense against its rhetorical and ideological malfeasances. It’s books and ideas that make you ready for the revolution. Free your mind and your ass will follow.
