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I hope someone assigns Martin Amis’ House of Meetings to Gary Shteyngart or Keith Gessen (or, ideally, to both) for review. Here’s a brief take from Esquire.

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“The arsehole is much maligned in modern times.” So begins Lucy Ellmann’s appreciation of Gargantua and Pantagruel, a pre-Don Quixote mock-heroic novel.

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The Rude Mechanicals’ Get Your War On opens Off-Broadway next month. (Sean Carman enjoyed the D.C. show.)

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William Logan on Florida, in poetry and otherwise

While I’m on the subject of the Sunshine State, here’s an excerpt from poet-critic William Logan’s “The State With the Prettiest Name.” (He titled the essay after the first line of Elizabeth Bishop’s “Florida.”) Portraits of Florida, its beauty almost too beautiful, often risk a shallow, shoreline prettiness, the preciousness of the postcard, whose penny purpose is always to incite . . .

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Joan Didion, David Foster Wallace, Sherman Alexie, Molly Ivins, and Jonathan Franzen all sit on The American Heritage Dictionary’s usage panel.

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