Holy frijole! Looks like Elvis Costello’s first orchestral work, Il Sogno, has the endorsement of Terry Teachout.

New York Post: “The full manuscript of ‘Charlotte Simmons’ has not been turned in, sources say, but The Post obtained about 100 unedited manuscript pages. The pages indicate that the novel will be more straightforward and concerned with a smaller world than either ‘Bonfire’ or ‘A Man in Full,’ but typically Wolfian in its keen, if disturbing, observations.” (via Gawker)

[UPDATE: Rolling Stone has an excerpt, which is….well, just plain goofy. “A gale was blowing in his head?”]

My review of Chang-rae Lee’s Aloft is now up at January. Reviews of The Coma and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas are forthcoming at various places.

WNBC: “A 36-year-old man led police on a short car chase, driving against traffic on a busy boulevard so he wouldn’t get caught with a stolen library book…. The chase lasted about 10 minutes, with about a dozen police cruisers involved. During the chase, officers saw the suspect toss a backpack out the car window, Connellan said. When they recovered it, they found the stolen book, Connellan said.”

San Francisco Chronicle: “One year, San Francisco novelist Herb Gold said he was offered an associate membership if he would help write the Grove play. Gold took fellow writer Earnest Gaines (‘A Lesson Before Dying’), an African American, to a Wednesday night entertainment at the six-story downtown club. Five members, he said, were in blackface. One member clapped Gaines on the back. ‘Looks like you’ve played a little football,’ Gold heard him say. Shortly thereafter, the writers took their leave. ‘I guess I’m not clubbable,’ Gold said wryly.”