Various authors, including Nell Freudenberger and Meg Wolitzer, have been asked by NOW Magazine to reveal which literary characters they’d like to sleep with. I like Freudenberger’s answer. Wolitzer’s response, on the other hand, is the kind of canned response I’d expect from an English undergraduate. Mr. Darcy indeed. Right. And Paul is your favorite Beatle.

I’m Elmo too! I protest with Gwenda. Why not the Snuffleupagus!

BBC: “Disney has condemned staff at its Paris theme park who took part in a joke video where they dressed as cartoon characters simulating sex.”

Danielle Steel: “For 25 years, I’ve been asked to put my name on a fragrance, and Anna Wintour made the match. I finally decided if it brings me some money, why not?”

Am I bad for thinking about Danielle Steel crawling through an urban gutter without her financial safety net? I want to see Steel confronted by cokehead editors who demand that she learn how to write. And then I want to see her forced to come to terms, like the hacks who languish in the slush pile (thank you, editors!), with the almost certain fact that she has no talent. And if, sans the stupendous sales of her shitty novels, she ends up whoring herself out in a crackhouse or marrying some affluent bozo for money, I contend that this would be a nobler service to humanity than the relentless solipsism that steers her plastic and vacuous mug through newspapers.

I’m probably a bad man for thinking these things. But then I have an issue with people who do things exclusively for commercial purposes. I’m not against commercialism completely. I realize we live in a capitalist society and there are certain (ethical) things we must do to get by. But I do take issue with folks who would rather live extravagantly than write extravagantly (and by “extravagantly,” I single out not necessarily showy prose, but those who write with great nuance). The Danielle Steels, John Grishams, Dan Browns, and Chuck Klostermans of our world so thoroughly debase the great art of writing that the great fury I feel for their pestilent contributions to American letters sometimes has me walking for miles to calm down. Only someone with a sophist sense of the world could find comfort in these authors. Only an artless savage could anticipate any of their next books.

(via Bookdwarf)

Man, Keith Olbermann really is angling to be the 21st century Edward R. Murrow.