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Daniel Levin Becker is a critic, editor, and translator from Chicago. An early contributing editor to the groundbreaking lyrics annotation site Rap Genius, he has written about music for The Believer, NPR, SF Weekly, and Dusted Magazine, among others. His first book, Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of Potential Literature (Harvard UP, 2012), recounts his induction into the French literary collective Oulipo, of which he became the youngest member in 2009. His published translations include Georges Perec's La Boutique Obscure (Melville House, 2013), Eduardo Berti's An Ideal Presence (Fern Books, 2021), and Serge Haroche's The Science of Light (Odile Jacob, 2021). He is also co-translator and co-editor of All That Is Evident Is Suspect: Readings from the Oulipo 1963-2018 (McSweeney's, 2018) and the editor of Dear McSweeney's: Two Decades of Letters to the Editor from Writers, Readers, and the Occasional Bewildered Consumer (McSweeney's, 2021). Levin Becker is a founding editor of Fern Books, English editor for the French nonfiction publisher Odile Jacob, senior editor at McSweeney's Publishing, and a longtime contributing editor to The Believer. He lives in Paris.
Praise for What's Good: Music aficionados and hip-hop lovers will savor every bit. -Publishers Weekly What's Good: Notes on Rap and Language is a celebration of the artistry and craft of rap lyrics written in a way that only Daniel Levin Becker could, with his sharp eye for linguistic experimentation and his appreciation for the ways rappers have been able to turn English inside out. His fascination is contagious as he revels in the incredible vitality of this ever-morphing lexicon, from its rhymes to its slang to its creation of new modes of meaning. It's the book us lovers of music and language had no idea we needed. -Emma Ramadan, Riffraff Books, Providence, RI Characterized with a clear love for hip-hop, Daniel Levin Becker's What's Good is a joyful and deep dive into the many wonders of hip-hop as an art form. -Bennard Fajardo, Politics and Prose Bookstore, Washington DC Praise for the work of Daniel Levin Becker A distinctly intimate and exceptionally entertaining book. [...] I can affirm, utterly without constraint, that [Levin Becker] makes an ideal guide to the ingeniously madcap wonderland that is potential literature and art. -Michael Dirda, Washington Post In this rare alloy of autobiography, biography, history, humor, meditation, ode, shaggy-dog story, and treatise, readers will discover a book that arouses an appetite for a type of knowledge one didn't know one needed. - Michael Autrey, Booklist [Levin] Becker is a shrewd and entertaining writer: His youthful enthusiasm is infectious and his style, which has hints of modern American intellectual goofballers such as David Foster Wallace, combines the erudite with a cheerfully self-conscious admission of obsessive word-nerdiness. His footnotes become impressive, digressive asides. -Sara Lodge, Weekly Standard His personal perspective is compelling, and his book is beautifully written. So wonderfully written, in fact, that it's entirely worth reading even if, like me, you remain unconvinced by the Oulipo, an outsider looking in. - David Winters, Berfrois He is obviously very smart, but he doesn't need to show you that; instead, he leads with his curiosity and his humility. -Julia Keller on Levin Becker's Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of Potential Literature
