Inspired by recent events, writer Tod Goldberg presents a sort of online living will indicating the situations in which he does not want to be resuscitated. He also asks for assisted suicide in certain instances: 5. If I begin to re-read Gravity’s Rainbow again just to see, finally, what the fuck I’m missing out on, end it. Jaime J. Weinman . . .
Twenty years ago, J.J. Jameson, one of Chicago’s “most beloved antiwar poets,” escaped from jail in Massachusetts, where he was serving time for a string of robberies and two brutal murders, according to police. His real name is Norman A. Porter Jr. Since the jailbreak, he’s been on the run, establishing a new identity but not keeping a particularly low . . .
Emma Garman’s “Extremely Similar and Incredibly Suspicious,” which appears at Mediabistro today, examines the resemblances between the new books from Jonathan Safran Foer and his wife, Nicole Krauss: Take a tragically dead father, a good-hearted but distracted mother, and a clever kid engaged in a mystery-solving quest around New York. Add weighty historical background, aging WWII survivors, some plot-driving letters/diary . . .
At the dentist (yes, again) yesterday, I picked up the latest issue of New York magazine and was delighted to find Keith Gessen’s excellent and highly critical review of Ian McEwan’s latest novel, Saturday, which I’m currently reading. The New York Sun interviews new Paris Review editor and New Yorker writer Philip Gourevitch, who says, “I’m not planning to make . . .
The proprietress of Tingle Alley takes note of the rise in book titles suggesting that the author was “dragged kicking and screaming into print.” Among them are Kirstie Alley’s How To Lose Your Ass and Regain Your Life: Reluctant Confessions of a Big-Butted Star and Richard M. Cohen’s Blindsided: Lifting a Life Above Illness. “Wouldn’t it be fabulous,” Caaf says: . . .