My review of John Cacioppo and William Patrick’s Loneliness appears in this morning’s Chicago Sun-Times. The book inspired me to use a very unusual metaphor,…
Denver Post: “One protester said police had used the spray “like a supersoaker” in front of the City and County Building.” Fear and Loathing in…
Brent Spiner appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #233. Spiner is most recently a producer and performer on the album, Dreamland. Condition of Mr. Segundo:…
Sarah Manguso appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #232. Manguso is most recently the author of The Two Kinds of Decay. Condition of Mr. Segundo:…
George: It pleases me immensely that you were fond of using the shorthand term, “ditto.” The word has intriguing etymology and yet you didn’t sprout…
BBC: “A man who chose ‘Lloyds is pants’ as his telephone banking password said he found it had been changed by a member of staff…
If this interview represents how McCain responds to questions — real questions, not the Leno softball variety, not the questions that result in the old…
An eleventh-hour interview, a looming deadline, and a few other things currently occupy just about every minute of my time. (I slept three hours last…
William T. Vollmann’s Imperial, which has been in the works for years, now has a publication date. It’s slated to be released by Viking on…
This comes from Publishers Weekly‘s Rachel Deahl, whose word must be taken with a grain of salt, but she’s claiming that San Francisco Chronicle books…
As Carolyn Kellogg notes, an angry mob has descended upon Susan Carpenter because Carpenter used the term “cunning linguist” in a review. But Carpenter is…
I am certainly not a fan of Salman Rushdie’s limitless capacity for self-promotion, but I am even less enamored of smug academics who wish to…
Reuters: “Iraqi Prime Minister Prime Nuri al-Maliki said on Monday that an agreement had been reached in negotiations on a security pact with the United…
Here are five publicists I’ve dealt with recently: Publicist A: Always sends you to the appropriate publicist, even though it’s not in department. Recognizes that…
Hillel Italie tracks down Robert Caro and gets some interesting info on the fourth volume of his ongoing Johnson biography. Caro hopes to tackle both…
In the past few weeks (and, particularly, the last seven days), I have read many thousands of pages. This is probably more work than one…
Some new figures released by the Radio Advertising Bureau suggest that radio is now facing problems. At both the local and national levels, radio revenue…
Joe Biden is Obama’s VP. From a graphic design standpoint, it will be much easier to get the words “Obama-Biden” on a bumper sticker than…
[EDITOR'S NOTE: While traveling on a bus, several passengers endured the drunken and boisterous clamor from several obnoxious frat boys in the back. They could...
George: Crazy day, quite sunny, with no showers. So much on the plate that a synapse malfunctioned. Was forced to grovel on the phone to…
In the past twenty-four hours: I learned that someone I knew had committed suicide. A toilet exploded in my face. I spent fifteen minutes, desperate…
Like Mr. Orthofer, I’m both delighted and appalled to see City Lights get the profile treatment. There isn’t time right now to investigate whether Times…
I’m only flitting through, but there are at least four things I have observed about Baltimore: (a) microsized crosswalk signals, no bigger than two cubic…
Paul Auster appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #231. Auster is most recently the author of Man in the Dark. Condition of Mr. Segundo: Opening…
We’ve received some very kind shoutouts lately from The Los Angeles Times‘s Carolyn Kellogg, The Sound of Young America‘s Colin Marshall, and The Fiction Circus’s…
Since the sleeping schedule has gone all to hell, it seems as good a time as any to point to numerous things. (I forgot what…
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