Am I still allowed on here or what?
Is my time up?
I was going to post a few more things before my tenure as “Wednesday Guest” expired. But perhaps it already has?
It’s funny, all this posting: I was nervous, skeptical, but then got quickly addicted to finding things and slapping them up on Maud’s site. It provides a strange sense of [...]
Dark stories
Crime fiction novelist P.D. James recently wrote that her storytelling began with the dark stories she told her siblings at night, as a kid.
Matchbooks were an essential prop of my childhood storytelling. Never mind that I wasn’t allowed to play with them. My mom would park the car outside a mall. [...]
I grew up reading his colums in The Miami Herald’s Tropic, people, leave me alone
Earlier this month, Claire Zulkey interviewed Miami’s Dave Barry. Here’s an excerpt:
Who are some of your favorite humor writers?
Steve Martin, Carl Hiaasen, Roy Blount Jr., Gene Weingarten, the late great Robert Benchley, the Onion people and a bunch more whose names escape me now because EVERYTHING escapes me now except body fat.
Nicholson Baker interview
Nicholson Baker talks about his latest book, A Box of Matches. I can’t stream audio at work, so I don’t know what he says. And I have yet to read the new novel, but I understand there’s an absence of phone sex and fold-dropping. Too bad. Sounds interesting anyway, though. (Via [...]
Readability
Test a site’s readability and then spend fifteen minutes trying to understand the results. Or maybe I just hadn’t had enough coffee when I tried it. (Via Cup of Chicha.)
Richard Clarke’s literary agent
Rachel Donadio interviews Richard Clarke’s agent, Len Sherman. He has only two active clients. Send him your counterterrorism pitches.
Rushdie at Downtown for Democracy
Tricia Romano of The Village Voice reports on last week’s Downtown for Democracy readings. Salman Rushdie put in a surprise appearance and read a “Dr. Seuss-ian take on the ballot controversy of 2000, ‘How the Grinch Stole America.’”
Romano says, “Eggers seemed to be the crowd’s favorite (Paul Auster and Jonathan Franzen were [...]
Update
If you’re just tuning in, Pasha Malla has been hosting the site today. Scroll down, and be entertained. Maybe even fall in love.
I’m going to post a couple of things quickly, and then I’ll return tomorrow. Today a friend of mine is having minor surgery. I’ll be collecting her at the hospital [...]
Thoughts on creative couples
Before I take off for the day, I thought I’d mention that I think couples (like Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein) who do “stuff” together are my favourite thing.
In the current issue of Readymade Magazine is a feature dedicated to couples who work creatively together. One of these couples is Kori Gardner and Jason [...]
Grain Magazine
Grain Magazine has a new look and new editors (including Kent Bruyneel, founder of the fantastic Forget Magazine). The first issue under Bruyneel features a new piece by Yann Martel, and it looks pretty slick by Canadian literary journal standards, which tend to have covers like this:
Hod Docs – Toronto
The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival has kicked off in Toronto. Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis have a film in it, The Take (scroll down for the link), about “Argentina’s radical new movement of occupied businesses: workers who return the country’s bankrupt workplaces and run them without bosses.” If I lived in [...]
The Feral Robot Dog Project (not Canadian, either)
I heard about this the other day.
They sniff, wag their tails, fetch and run in packs. Inside their plastic and metallic skins, robotic dogs programmed by engineering students at Yale University even have a social conscience. The mechanical canines, equipped with just about everything but a wet nose, are wired to sniff out toxic [...]
Mark Kozelek
My friend and occasional collaborator on stupid things, Mike Baker, interviews Mark Kozelek (Red House Painters, Sun Kil Moon) at Splendid.
(Mike is Canadian, so this counts).
Crud
All of my posts were meant to be Canadian. I plum forgot.
Book towns
Some time ago either Maud or Stephany were talking about “book towns” in the UK. I am not even sure if I am using the correct name. Small towns with a lot of bookshops, anyway.
Last summer I spent a few days at a friend’s place in the Wye Valley in Wales, and on [...]