Richard Nash, publisher of Soft Skull, stated that he would not sleep for the duration of the year. “Sleeping gets in the way of the way we do business at Soft Skull,” said Nash. “If I’ve learned anything from talking with the litbloggers, it’s the Dan Wickett philosophy: There’s always an emergency energy reserve.” Nash decided to carry out the plan after meeting with several sleep specialists, who assured him that, aside from a few power naps, he could very well continue working without sleep for many months.

“I realize that I’m just one guy and that this probably isn’t very good for me. But then I’ve always lived by the credo: nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

In a stunning revelation, Ayelet Waldman has revealed that she loves herself more than she loves her husband Michael Chabon. “Forget the kids,” wrote Waldman in a recent Salon piece. “Forget Michael, manly though he may be. I now know that I’m the center of my universe and that anything getting in the way of loving me is a problem.” Waldman came to these conclusions after rereading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and pampering herself with a few soothing mud baths. “I should have seen the writing on the wall. As these underpaid masseuses kept asking me if everything was okay, I began to realize that I’m okay. And you’re okay if you love me too.”

Stanley Crouch, who slapped Dale Peck in a restaurant in July 2004, has been spending the past year and a half determining which authors that he should slap next. “I’ve whittled it down to twelve names,” said Crouch. “But I’m hoping to hone it down to ten. Nobody disses Stanley Crouch.” When asked to reveal these names, Crouch remarked that there would “be a few surprises” and that he was not at liberty to say who they were.

“The problem is that plotting the slaps has kept me from writing more books,” said Crouch. “But once I get the violence out of my system, I plan to write more lackluster novels.”

Inspired by recent memoirs from Erica Jong and Edmund White, acclaimed writer Jane Smiley promises that you’ll be seeing a side of her you’ve never seen before with her upcoming memoir, The Notches On My Bedpost. “People think that because you write about horses all the time or your letters get published in the New York Times that you don’t have much of a sex life,” said Smiley, in a recent interview with The Paris Review. “Well, dammit, Erica Jong has nothing to compare against me. Martha Stewart’s husband? Why, I fucked Martha Stewart!” Smiley’s statements have stunned the literary community, who were eagerly awaiting another benign volume about horses that they could discuss with their book clubs. New Yorker editor David Remnick is equally remiss. “If Jane wants to go down that sensationalistic road, well, we won’t be publishing her in these pages.”

In an interview with Le Monde Diplomatique, Michel Houellebecq revealed that he’s grown tired of shocking literary audiences. “I got to a certain point in my career and realized that beneath the tawdry revelations, there’s a kinder, gentler Hoeullebecq,” said Houellebecq, who had also recently given up smoking. Houellebecq, who is now considering becoming a monk, is now writing a novel with “cute and cuddly animals” and promises that it will offend nobody. He is also in talks with Disney about adapting Whatever into a G-rated film adaptation. “It’s the toughest thing I’ve ever had to write, but this should be something you can take the whole family to see. I’m even giving the narrator a name.”