Robert Sheckley, whose combination of comedy and science fiction is criminally underrated (and whose work inspired Douglas Adams), is in critical condition in Russia. Apparently, Sheckley went to Odessa to attend a science fiction writing forum and suffered from a respiratory insufficiency. What’s worse is that there seems to be a major struggle to get Sheckley into a state clinic.

I certainly hope Sheckley pulls through.

Spurned on in part by Maud, here are some statistically improbable phrases from certain books:

• Absalom! Absalom!: “monkey nigger,” “balloon face,” “dont hate,” “right all right all right”
• American Psycho: “little hardbody,” “wool tuxedo,” “her asshole,” “urinal cake,” “clock reservation,” “drink tickets,” “spread collar,” “dry beer,” “pocket square”
• Atlas Shrugged: “furnace foreman,” “young brakeman,” “tower director,” “transcontinental traffic,” “superlative value,” “best railroad”
• Beloved: “men without skin,” “white stairs,” “baby ghost”
• Blindness: “black eyepatch,” “white sickness,” “milky sea,” “emergency stairs”
• Brick Lane: “multicultural liaison office, “tattoo lady,” “ignorant types,” “girl from the village”
• Cloud Atlas: “steely gate,” “our dwellin” (Only four come up, despite the presence of the “Sloosha’s Crossin'” section!)
• Concrete Island: “overturned taxi,” “route indicators,” “metal crutch,” “feeder road,” “paraffin stove,” “bruised skin”
• The Corrections: “country ribs”
• A Death in the Family: “her trumpet”
• Empire of the Senseless: “red sponge”
• Gravity’s Rainbow: “pig suit,” “rocket field,” “firing site,” “runcible spoon”
• The Great Gatsby: “old sport”
• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: “fucking wallet,” “green fluid”
• I Am Charlotte Simmons: “ilial crest,” “very hide,” “sobs sobs sobs sobs,” “compressed his lips,” “library tower,” “depressed girl,” “camper top”
• Mrs. Dalloway: “solitary traveller”
• One Hundred Years of Solitude: “porch with the begonias,” “insomnia plague,” “banana company,” “ermine cape,” “eating earth”
• Oryx and Crake: “fridge magnets”
• The Recognitions: “tall bellboy,” “small man with beer,” “plexiglass collar,” “distinguished novelist,” “weh weh,” “bull figure,” “hand mounting,” “youthful portrait,” “yetzer hara”
• Revolutionary Road: “rubber syringe” (Well, who else referred to it so obliquely?)
• Slaughterhouse-Five: “old war buddy”
• The Sot-Weed Factor: “bit oft,” “poet exclaimed,” “our barge,” “ocean isle,” “silver seal”
• This Is Not a Novel: “died mad”
• Tropic of Cancer: “rich cunt,” “guys upstairs”
• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: “man with the guitar case,” “vinyl hat,” “macaroni gratin,” “telephone woman,” “cooking spaghetti,” “vacant house”

Patricia Storms serves up a pictorial response to the Great Oprah Debate.

At long last, Tito has unveiled his Coachella report, which includes a video of the much heralded Arcade Fire upwards crawl.

• Will Self once suggested that if Tony Blair should read John Gray’s Straw Dogs to put Blair’s thoughts into perspective. Tom Freke begs to differ, suggesting that it “could have been an interesting book, if only it was written by someone without such a large chip on his shoulder.”
• Europeans are up in arms about Google Print. They’re so upset about the potential for American cultural dominance that a “European digital library” is being talked about. Now if only Europeans could get angry enough to create an all-powerful search engine without ads and without tracking an obscene amount of personal information.
• Believe it or not, there’s hope for the future. Around 70 middle school students engaged in a “Battle of the Books” quiz that had the kids recalling details from books they read months ago. They’ve had to pry books out of these kids’ hands. And here’s the cool thing. This went down in Piedmont, Virginia. The organizers of the event have seen this thing spread to 22 states.
• John Updike takes on surrealism in the NYRoB.
• Mark lists what he’d do as LATBR editor.