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“Will Self is a nut,” says my buddy Reeves (of the Vonnegut dream). “And I love him.”

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Your average fruitcake was more palatable in Emily Dickinson’s day. (Found thanks to the Great Fruitcake Debate at Making Light.)

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Graham Greene on film and the short story

Mark recently alerted me to the existence of The Graham Greene Film Reader, a giant volume I’m now reading intermittently. I confess I turned first to the interviews section, rather than to Greene’s actual criticism. Here’s his answer to a question, posed at a “Guardian Film Lecture,” about the cinematic potential of the short story. I think one thing is . . .

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On notes girls leave around for parents to find

I enjoyed Neil Gaiman’s post about his daughter Maddy’s self-referential whiteboard (at right) and post-it notes. They remind me of the childhood journal entries Alison Bechdel reproduced in Fun Home, particularly the ones that were written more to win the approval of some indeterminate audience than for herself. In one of these, if memory serves, Bechdel complained about missing a . . .

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Michael Shelden observes that CNN’s footage of Thomas Pynchon is available on You Tube. I watched it and promptly felt like an asshole. (Discussion here.)

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