Ann Taylor Cook, aka the Gerber Lady, has been using her postpartum postergirling to move copies of her first novel. Cook said that she sold 10 books in an hour when the Gerber drawing was on the table next to her. The 77-year old newcomer plans to start drooling and repeatedly banging her spoon into a bowl for future in-store appearances.

Harlan Ellison’s copyright case against AOL has been revitalized by an appeal. The 69-year old curmudgeon declared that his blood pressure hadn’t dropped and that he would “beat the shit out of those motherfuckers, tearing their obsidian sphincters out with my bare hands.” When asked how he would unleash this violence before a judge and jury, Ellison offered no explanations, but he called the journalist asking this question “a parvenu of the first order.”

A “quirkyalone party” has been planned in New York for Valentine’s Day. Several dateless thirtysomethings plan to attend, crying for hours into a collective cistern, and then spending the afternoon dwelling on their misery rather than ignoring the silly holiday (like most single people). The Quirkyalone label that has now been trademarked. An I Am Quirkyalone! Hear Me Wilt! affirmation video can be found in Wal-Mart in August.

The Guardian reports that, far from being a dour bore and a real pissant, Immanuel Kant was a wild and crazy guy. According to three new biograhies, Kant was actually known as “the Robert Downey, Jr. of his day.” So committed was Kant to debauchery that attentions are now being paid to a recently discovered treatise called “Critique of Crystal Meth.”

New census results reveal that Americans would rather curl up with a good book than surf the Web. It was also reported that book bloggers would prefer this to, but that most of them could not refrain from posting links because “their jobs were unbelievably boring.”

And happy birthday, Sarah!

Pollack vs. Grambo on Lou Dobbs. If anybody Tivoed it, let me know.

Rush & Molloy reports (via Darwin Porter’s upcoming bio) that Katharine slept with the following people: Claudette Colbert, Greta Garbo, Judy Holliday, Judy Garland, Laura Harding, Irene Selznick, the daughter of Louis B. Mayer, the wife of David O. Selznick, Ernest Hemingway, John Ford, George Stevens, John Barrymore, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Robert Ryan, Robert Mitchum, Burt Lancaster, Paul Henreid, and (of course) Spencer Tracy.

Maya Angelou is profiled by the Boston Globe. Several paragraphs focus upon Angelou’s effect on a crowd. There are comparisons made between Angelou and Lorraine Hansberry. In fact, the general gist is that if you haven’t read Angelou, you probably should, though without explaining why and without outlining an argument. It’s the kind of tepid summary that spells out what’s wrong with current book coverage. Instead, of inviting entree into the I’ve Read At Least Three Angelou Books And I Liked ‘Em club, the article admonishes why you should read it in a way that resembles an Atkins Diet manifesto, though without the immediate payoff.

The Age notes that spending ten minutes a day writing in a journal improves mental health. However, writing three hours a day and failing to publish a book after ten years will turn you into Laura Miller.

The new Paris Review is up. Michael Frayn offers some interesting advice: ” Let me say for a start that I don’t think it is a very good idea to write different sorts of things. If I were to give serious practical advice to a young writer about how to succeed I would say: Write the same book, or the same play, over and over again, just very slightly different, so that people get used to it. It takes some time, but if you do it often enough, finally people will get the hang of it, and get familiar with it, and they’ll like it. ”

Of course, Frayn notes that he hasn’t done this personally. I’d like to think that this revelation is a circumlocutory way of taking out the competition. But it bears striking similarities to recent quotes by Bill Keller.

Newsday interviews Ana Menendez, a Cuban exile turned novelist. She once believed that Fidel had supernatural powers. But she changed her mind after reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, realizing that just about everybody does. Millenialists are courting Ms. Menendez as a possible spokesperson.

The NYRoB has a Helen Keller pfoile up. It quotes heavily from the correspondence between Henry James and Keller and examines their relationship.

And the Post dwells upon confession, trying to find the line when a memoir or an essay becomes Too Much Information (or TMI, to use Post vernacular). Susan Shapiro notes that her memoir Five Men Who Broke My Heart has resulted in her husband writing a response, The Bitch Beside Me. And Dale Peck has responded to this memoir by writing The Bitch Inside Me.