A poem written by Tennessee Williams that nobody had known about was discovered in the playwright’s 1937 Greek exam. The poem concerns a talking rodent named Kowalski and vividly describes various rats mating — all this within a mere seventeen lines. Apparently, Williams misheard the rat’s squeak (“Eeeekya! Eeeeekya!”) as “Stella! Stella!” and was later inspired to write A Streetcar Named Desire.
Maclean’s has an inside scoop of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Apparently, FSG’s insides are “no larger than the average Manhattan kitchen and its pale blue-green paint evokes feelings not of publishing glory, but of high school labs and hospital waiting rooms.” Competitors hoping to reproduce FSG’s continued success (now with Marilynne Robinson) have begun to tone down their decor, all too happy to tear down the walls, expose their fiberglass and let their production interns suffer premature deaths from asbestos poisoning.
Orlando Bloom is not playing James Bond, nor is he even remotely interested in the fictional spy. At a press conference, he denied ever reading James Bond or seeing a James Bond movie. He adamantly refuses martinis and would rather play a Morris chair in an expensive historical epic than sully his vigor as a debaucherer. He also hasn’t been very fun these days.
The Age says that “sex is difficult to write about” and then proceeds to expend several words on its influence in literature. Apparently, literary perversion all began with an obscure reference to fellatio in an early edition of the Gutenberg Bible.
“Magnetic attraction” is what brought Charles and Camilla together. And to show reporters just what he was talking about, Prince Charles revealed that he was, in fact, a giant transformer. In response to the sudden electric fields surrounding Buckingham Palace, certain princesses named Sarah have begun to practice Fergiemagnetism.