My sources tell me that Sam Tanenhaus is the next NYTBR editor. Publishers Weekly has more. Tanenhaus has authored bios of Whittaker Chambers and Louis Armstrong (and has an upcoming one on William Buckley), contributes to The New Republic and is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair. He is a writer primarily known for nonfiction bouncing between politics, biography and literature, which is what Keller was looking for. Here’s Tanenhaus on Updike.

[UPDATE: Maud found the link to the memo.]

Charles has dug up some fascinating info about Bailey’s. Apparently, the creamy liquor is preserved through the whiskey. And it can last as long as two years. However, Bailey’s suggests that you drink it within six months. Charles, however, was able to detect a suitable creamy taste after a year and a half. Presumably, in sharing this information, the company isn’t considering its profits at all. It has only its customers’ best interests at heart.

But all this talk of alcohol preservation has me contemplating the future of liquor, should Bush be elected to a second term.

After the Super Size recall and Ashcroft’s hijinks, I genuinely suspect that we’re going to see bottles that are modified for each individual. A tiny blade will extract a blood sample from each individual purveyor at a liquor store and decide in an instant just how much liquor is good for them. The blood sample will be compared against a database (specifically DUIs and D&D charges), as well as that individual’s tolerance for alcohol.

This will be necessary. Because the state remains convinced that people cannot be responsible for their own lives and, with states bereft of funds, there aren’t any additional funds to educate people. (Plus, parents and people in general are offended too easily. To introduce anything beyond the limited parameters of the No Child Left Behind Act will cause too much trouble.)

Beyond preserving the national supply of Bailey’s, this new bottle technology will raise the price of alcohol (and expand profits and consumer confidence; good for everyone, yo). But, more importantly, it will prevent auto collisions. And the state, in extracting a liberty, will be able to look upon this declining statistic and proudly proclaim its progress. Forget the people thrown in prison on trivial charges or the suspected terrorists hied away to closed military tribunals. Or for that matter the individual’s ability to decide how much alcohol s/he can drink.

Meanwhile, the drugs that harm no one and that do not cause a single fatality will remain criminalized. And the street peddlers susurrating “green bud” will be arrested by a renewed police force. Never mind that these small-time merchants have the same preservationist interests at heart and are probably just as ruthless in their dealings as R & A Bailey & Co.

The important result here is that liquor will be preserved. And people will no longer be sauced on a Saturday night. They will stare like lucid does into the headlights of that steamroller about to mow them down and, with stupid uncritical eyes, not understand that their spirits have been diluted.

The happy Pullman train doesn’t stop with Chabon. The Archbishop of Canterbury notes that despite Phillip Pullman’s “anti-Christian” stance, he finds the trilogy a near miraculous triumph. The Left Behind books, meanwhile, remain miraculous only in dramatically underestimating how many readers are willing to defer to guilt and paranoia.

Dame Muriel Spark, best known for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, is 86 and still writing, despite arthritis, failing eyesight and an inveterate biscuit addiction. She’s just published her 23rd novel.

Harvey Pekar has nabbed a three-book deal with Ballantine. The first will be a followup to American Splendor, dealing with the making of the film, and the next two will be biographies rather than autobiographies. Pekar’s wife, Joyce Brabner, noted that, “We can at last afford to add protein to our diet.”

Judy Blume must be trying to avoid soup kitchens these days. She’s just signed away her books to Disney. Whether Deenie‘s infamous masturbation will be addressed on screen (preferably with Donald Duck involved) remains to be seen.

Online reference sites have cut into the encyclopedia. If there’s any boon to this sad news, it means less encyclopedia salesmen hectoring you at the door. However, Jehovah’s witnesses, hoping to take advantage of this downturn, plan to step up their efforts.

Liverpool has come up with a unique way to celebrate its writers: a beer mat. Some of the initial ideas included a commemorative toilet brush, collectible maxis, and an Alan Bleasdale nose hair trimmer. Fortunately, the Liverpool lads settled on the beer mat. Declasse, yes. But truer to the Liverpool spirit.

The PEN/Faulkner nominees have been announced:

Elroy Nights by Frederick Barthelme
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by Z.Z. Packer
A Distant Shore by Caryl Phillips
The Early Stories by John Updike
Old School by Tobias Wolff

The winner will receive $15,000. The other finalists will nab $5,000. Between the endless New Yorker pieces and the backlist lucre, I’d say Updike’s due a tax audit right about now.

A version of Sam Shepard’s True West playing at the Baruch College Theater turned the sisters into brothers. Shepard was not amused and ordered the play shut down through his agent. The play’s fate is up in the air. (Also in the article: David Talbot has hired Sidney Blumenthal as Salon’s Washington bureau chief. Between this and The Clinton Wars, does this sound like a man whose reputation was completely decimated by Matt Drudge?)

The Hollywood Reporter does the math. Mel will get about $115 million from The Passion. Which means he’ll never have to work again. Let’s hope not.

First, the Age gets intimidated by Coetzee. Now it’s frightened by Sara Nelson? Two different writers, same newspaper. What’s the matter with journalists at the Age? Are they terrified of all interview subjects? Someone Down Under needs a hug. (via Sarah)

Maud: “She and my stepdad and all the other mourners except my sister and Mr. Maud went to their cars. They were all wringing their hands and shaking their heads, clearly mortified at our behavior. People just don’t watch the lowering of the casket in Baptist cemeteries in Bumcombe County, I guess.”

Christopher Farah’s second Salon book review has a low-concept spiteful approach that seems perfect for one of those free liberal weekly rags that you pick up at a cafe and read on the crapper. Farah is a critic incapable of enjoying science fiction (apparently, this is how he categorizes any novel involving magical realism), let alone putting aside genre distinctions for the sake of enjoying a book. Farah is a needlessly bitter and angry worm who cannot put aside a goofy premise for the sake of a good read.

Or is he? The review shifts near the end and suddenly plays nice.

Salon wants us to whip out our credit cards for this?

Of course, in a free weekly, the reviewer’s name would be subject to ridicule — and the review would be trite, overly ad hominen and shallow. Perhaps with a touch of genuine passion, but ultimately unprintable in any place publishing serious criticism. Instead, Christopher Farrah’s review purports to be a serious work of criticism, housed in an online outlet that believes itself to be PBS, with the ads functioning as surrogate pledge breaks. It is a review written with too many clauses and lots of bitter modifers, presumably with the hope that this will transform what is obviously an out-to-lunch attack piece (or at least half an attack) into an essay that doesn’t even understand the basics of speculative fiction.

Imagine a thirtysomething critic that you hope to get a reasonable opinion from on a book. But instead, he pulls down his pants and moons you. Then he calls you an idiot for daring to find something positive about the piece of turd coming out of his ass. And then he turns around and kisses you on the lips.

That is Christopher Farah in a nutshell. No subtlety, no wit. Strange flip-flops (several of them in fact) inside paragraphs. Not even a hint of reason. Just a man going after the strangest targets with unjustified piss and vinegar. It recalls the French revolution in 1789. But instead of crazed mobs calling for “liberty, equality and brotherhood,” Christopher Farah calls for the anonybloggers to reveal themselves and books to clarify their literatary categorization. I could be wrong, but there might be more pressing issues of our time.

And now the Tivoli review which, at its essence, is neither a love story, a hate piece, nor fantasy or science fiction. One would hope that its unchecked fire and its cross-spectrum fulminating represents something satirical. But, no, it appears he’s serious. What’s really odd is how Farah, after spending paragraphs bemoaning the “gimmick,” then turns around to call the book “an excellent read.”

Either Farah is a schizophrenic writer, or he’s unintentionally amusing us. You make the call.

(Hat tip: Beatrice.)