• Scott Timberg takes a look at the crazed tour business that have cropped up around John Fante.
• A 1991 interview with Chinua Achebe. (via Maud)
• On YouTube: the first episode of Black Books. (It picks up, Keir. Trust me.) (via Likely Stories)
• Thomas Jones on Eggers. (via Laila)
• Edward Tufte profiled. (via James Tata)
• “The Hard Truth About Hardbacks”.
• “Secret Asian Man.” (via Colleen)

• Adam Bellow: “If I had learned one thing from my historical study of nepotism (yes, that was the subject of my book), it’s that a boy needs many fathers in his journey to manhood.” The problem with such a generalization is that when one considers daddy bears, fatherhood and nepotism take on more troubling definitions.
• Bob Hoover talks with Pete Hamill.
• The Bookseller reports that a new Stephen King novella will be in the July issue of Esquire. Even if it is just Stephen King, I must applaud Esquire‘s willingness to devote 23 pages of its magazine to fiction.
• Is Andrew Cockburn’s Rumsfeld hatchet job compelling enough to stand above its own clearly demarcated vitriol?
• Weiner on Paper Cuts: “I can’t wait. Seriously, I can’t. I bet my husband it’ll be less than five days before the blog mentions perennial Times boycrush Gary Shteyngart. If I win, I get a water ice.”
• Is BEA a waste of money for the aspiring author? (via Slushpile)
• Andrew O’Hagan on Don DeLillo.
• What next? Will they set up journalistic export processing zones? (via Ron Silliman)
• The San Diego Union-Tribune offers a summer reading roundup.
• A Stephen Dixon profile. (via Dale Keiger)
• Are lost pants worth $65 million? I mean, if it’s really another predictable series of dick wars (from a judge, no less), I’m wondering how many penis implants you could get for that price. (via Henry Kisnor)
• Dan Chiasson on Les Murray’s poetry.
• Litminds interviews Jessica Stockton.
• Jenny D points to another Jenny D’s take on Chabon.
• Slate’s Michelle Tsai looks (too briefly) into how a dirty word gets dirty. (via Literary Gas)
• RIP Ousmane Sembene. (via Laila)
• Is Jonathan Lethem “an overeager college student?”
• It appears that the New York Times has hired TvNewser blogger Brian Stelter as a media reporter.
• For those thinking of McSweeney’s financial woes, Matthew Tiffany offers an independent presses harangue.
• Oh no.
• There are some troubling comics “obscenity” battles going down at the border. (via Bookninja)

The latest Theremin development.

Between my laptop being afflicted with a virus and rendered unbootable (with the potential data loss of 10,000 words of my novel, several short stories, two radio plays, two acts of a play, audio data for five podcasts, and too many notes) and my inability to respond to any edrants emails for a while because of the draconian Port 25 requirements (“You can host your domain with us!”) and the almost total misrepresentation (“Actually, we won’t have static IPs in your neighborhood for another two weeks. Or maybe longer. [insert barely concealed laughter from tech guy]”) of my broadband provider, I’m limping along here as best as I can between deadlines. (At least one computer still works!)

The moral of the story is this: Back up your data, and back it up often. And get your broadband quote on paper, no matter what these bozos promise you.

If you’ve sent me an email to the main address, I can read them, but I won’t be able to answer them for a while. I’m sorry. Try arizona_jim at yahoo.com for the next two weeks if you need to get in touch with me in a hurry. I’m hoping to get back to everyone once these technical issues are worked out.

In any event, I hope to offer an update tonight or tomorrow.

Dwight Garner has joined the blogosphere, which means, of course, that Sam Tanenhaus can start ignoring its own pages and calling its own material “sub-literary.”