John Updike takes on the new Gabriel García Márquez novel. He decries the book’s narrator for not considering “the atavistic barbarism of buying girls in…
Bookish reports that singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens is now writing 50 songs for 50 states.
BusinessWeek reports that men aren’t reading magazines the way they used to. I’m going to suggest something radical: Could it be that men are more…
During a particularly harsh bout of insomnia that involved carrying on a colloquy with my skull, I buzzed down my hair to the shortest length…
Funny how when it comes to a form like comics being bastardized, Jessa Crispin has no problem broadsiding the critics for declaring a specific genre…
I think it’s time for the Yankee Potroast guys to start summarizing Chris Ware’s The Strip: Building Stories. Because much as I love Jimmy Corrigan,…
If, like me, you’re looking for that special someone, it’s always good to keep your options open. But if you’re the type to play with…
Jennifer Weiner is back home and she notes this strange question about a woman asking her at the San Francisco Barnes & Noble if she…
William T. Vollmann’s The Rainbow Stories, the illustrated version. (An incredible find from the Rake.)
CBS News: From 1982 until 1985, he served as director of special projects in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. It was perhaps…
The Book Standard asks if a reference to Flann O’Brien’s great classic The Third Policeman on the television show Lost has had any sales impact….
[PRODUCER'S NOTE: Jorge was unavailable this week. So we were forced to enlist a man who claimed to have performed voiceover work for the 1970s...
Margaret Atwood has made her acting debut. Sort of. The deal is that there’s a staged reading in the works of The Penelopiad, Atwood’s latest…
The erstwhile Mr. Wickett has returned from vacation and, once again, he’s demonstrated to the world that he has the stamina of ten men. (Might…
Forbes Magazine has peered into the workplace and determined that it’s the bloggers who are evil incarnate. Good to see time and money spent on…
HANK: All these millions of dollars they’re giving us. HAL: Billions, Hank. Billions. HANK: Alright, billions. HAL: I understand, Hank. It’s hard to maintain a…
What M.A.O. said. Dave Weich can keep living in a glass tower as long he wants. But to take on the attitude that one must…
The inestimable Tito Perez sends along this Sam Sacks item concerning Dave Eggers’ Best American Nonrequired Reading Series, largely because of the Vollmann shoutout. Sacks…
The Telegraph has a review of Anthony Biswell’s long-awaited biography of Anthony Burgess (now available from Picador). But it looks as if the Telegraph has…
Litkicks offers a contrarian take to the Lethem-Birnbaum colloquy. Legion (via Brandywine Books). Hemingway and Dos Passos, war buddies. (via Rake) At Galleycat, various folks…
First Warren Buffett, now Terry McAuliffe. Sweet Jeebus. What provokes these nutball seven-figure advances? Sure, Buffett and McAulife have both proved quite adept in the…
The Wonder Chicken returns, although he’s playing hard to get and feeling a bit introspective about this aging thing: a existential predicament that we can…
It looks like Target policy involves refusing to fill emergency contraception prescriptions. In a Missouri Target store, a 26 year old woman was refused an…
Richard Nash has returned from Frankfurt and he’s now blogging up a storm. Perhaps his most interesting entry is this exchange between Nash and the…