Obama eats vegetables, and the WaPo eats a little crow
Tom Toles’ Washington Post editorial cartoon, Obama’s Eating of Vegetables Fuels Rumors About Him, satirizes Wednesday’s inane front-page Washington Post story, Foes Use Obama’s Muslim Ties to Fuel Rumors About Him.
Elizabeth Bishop and the U.S.A. School of Writing
“When I think about it,” Elizabeth Bishop once wrote to James Merrill, “it seems to me I’ve rarely written anything of value at the desk or in the room where I was supposed to be doing it — it’s always in someone else’s house, or in a bar, or standing up in the kitchen in [...]
Pynchon graffiti
Someone has been spray-painting Thomas Pynchon’s muted trumpet around the UC Santa Barbara campus.
Five novels of ideas, courtesy of Calvin Baker
Calvin Baker recommends 5 novels depicting a new world order. Among them: books by Bolaño, Ellison, and Ishiguro.
Assumptions as to the godawfulness of any particular writer’s fiction
The 101 Reasons to Stop Writing calendar should fulfill all your demotivation needs for the coming year.
Díaz’s very own “Dominican Akira“
Junot Díaz tells Edwidge Danticat that he’s resuming work on a sci-fi novel set in an alternate U.S.
Twain play to debut on Broadway 12/9
Great news: the stagehands get their deal, and Twain’s Is He Dead? will debut 12/9, shortly after his 162nd birthday.
Joshua Ferris’ grilled cheese sandwich
This month I’m posting recipes and food-related stories from some writers I like. Today Joshua Ferris, whose Then We Came to the End has been named one of the New York Times’ ten best books of 2007, explains how to make a perfectly browned grilled cheese sandwich.
I admired Ferris’ novel in Newsday last [...]
Illness keeps Lessing from Nobel ceremony
Doris Lessing’s bad back — a side-effect of osteoporosis? — will keep her from attending the Nobel investiture ceremony.
Brock Clarke is ready to rumble for Miss Jean Brodie
Brock Clarke on Muriel Spark: “What is it about the books you love that make you hate the people who don’t?”
Henry James on Louisa May Alcott’s Moods
Henry James, “weary of stories about precocious little girls,” shredded Miss Alcott’s first novel.
Melancholic man, melancholic text, melancholic tribe
“Physically, I’d flown the Southern coop. Mentally? Not then, not now.” Kit Meads contemplates The Mind of the South.
NBCC’s “Best Recommended List” debuts
The National Book Critics Circle has unveiled its new monthly recommended books list — which, as I understand it, is designed to provide alternatives to mainstream bestseller lists — by posting inaugural selections covering all of 2007. MaudNewton.com favorites Junot Díaz and Edwidge Danticat top the fiction and nonfiction lists, respectively. Head over [...]
True Grit in reprint
Charles Portis’ True Grit is republished for its 40th anniversary. In a saner world, it would never have gone out of print.
Faulkner abroad
U.S. State Dept. records detail William Faulkner’s travels abroad, which are little-studied by biographers.
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