Mark gives Rose/Birnbaum a run for their money and interviews Dan Rhodes. While there aren’t any Elton John-like confessions, the interview’s a good read. I hope other literary blogs will start taking it to the next level and start interviewing authors who come through their respective towns.

Marty Beckerman claims that he was misquoted by Rebecca Traister. This isn’t the first time Traister’s been accused of overeager journalism, though, to Beckerman’s credit, he never demands a brawl with David Talbot. (via Bookslut)

Spalding Gray’s body may have been found. An autopsy is underway to determine identification.

And a London librarian claims that nursery rhymes are naughty. Of course. We all know that the spider sitting on Little Miss Muffet’s tuffet is really a horny dude with eight dicks. The curds and whey are clearly graveside bukkake. We all know that the grandma-eating Big Bad Wolf represents a guy with an older woman fetish and a closet subscription to MILF Monthly. And we all know that Sleeping Beauty was the princess that the rabble couldn’t chat up and take back to the inn. Nursery rhymes are indecent! It is my fervent hope that the Bush Administration will prevent this filth from corrupting the minds of our children.

If you don’t believe me, one hard look at “Georgie Porgie” should obviate all innocence:

Georgie Porgie, puddin’ and pie

[Clearly, the elided G illustrates that the rhyme is not about “pudding,” but about “putting it in.” Centuries before the naughtiness of American Pie, “Georgie Porgie” establishes in its first line a distinct pastryphilia. The implication of “Poor G” after “Georgie” implies a guilt for the events about to happen. Furthermore, like Nostradamus predicting the threat of Saddam Hussein, the basis for Georgie is not George IV, but George Michael and his infamous bathroom incident.]

Kissed the girls and made them cry.

[If Georgie Porgie intended merely to kiss the girls, then his behavior would be relatively harmless. But the fact that the girls are crying suggests one of two possibilities: (1) either Georgie Porgie has halitosis (unlikely) or (2) Georgie Porgie is a closet rapist, causing untold grief. Note how easy it is to replace the line with “Screwed the girls and made them cry.”]

When the boys came out to play.

[Not content with forced debauchery, Georgie Porgie expands his horizons and illustrates to his peers that he swings both ways.]

Georgie Porgie ran away.

[Again, by anticipating the furor over same-sex marriages, the nursery rhyme proves to be well ahead of its time. Instead of coming to terms with his polymorphously perverse nature or indeed atoning for his sins as a rampant rapist, Georgie Porgie decides to run away and return to his cave. The subconscious message being fed to children is that not only is it okay to “make girls cry,” but that one’s true deviant nature must be kept from the populace, ideally in an isolationist environment, much like the Catholics.]

A Welsh booklist has been considered too highbrow to be relevant. The Welsh have insisted that booklists aren’t for them. A spokesman for the Eisteddfod Preservation Society said that they’d rather spend all day complaining about the weather than caring about contemporary culture. “Besides,” said the spokesman. “We were telling stories long before Chaucer.”

T.C. Boyle has no hope whatsoever. Beyond that, there’s the question of why T.C. Boyle remains hit-or-miss with the literati. The Chronicle doesn’t get many answers, but they do get some quirky quotes from Boyle. His National Book Award-nominated novel, Drop City, hit paperback not long ago. He’s currently on tour. If you pick up this month’s Harper’s, you’ll find a Boyle story. There’s also another great story called “Chicxulub” (referenced in the Chronicle piece) in the March 1, 2004 New Yorker.

Meanwhile, NPR has some fun audio clips up of T.C. Boyle’s old band (including T.C. singing “I Put a Spell on You”).

If you haven’t read Boyle, and you’ve failed to perceive my mad gushing for the man, some good titles to start with are The Road to Wellville and World’s End.

Sara Paretsky has a new V.I. Warshawski novel out. (And I’m curious as to why everyone’s favorite mystery blogger has remained so silent on Paretsky, beyond an enigmatic high school connection which nobody need talk about.)

While Yardley dismisses Studs Lonigan, Roger Ebert, of all people, digs up an evening he spent in 1968 with James Farrell. There’s some interesting tidbits, including Farrell deliberately avoiding sleep so that he can write 20 hours at a stretch, four of Farrell’s novels burned in a fire (and thus unpublishable in the days before computers), and Farrell’s personally penned obituary. Even James Brown, having met Farrell early in his career, had to concede “the hardest working man in show business” title to Farrell after discovering his working habits. However, when Farrell died in 1979, the title was officially restored to Brown.

Intersting statistic: Michael Moore sold 1.1 million copies of Stupid White Men in Germany. Probably because the title of Bill O’Reilly’s latest book was mistakenly printed up as Are the Crazy American Conservatives Looking Out for You Now? Run Away! They Get Very Angry on Television!

The New Yorker: “[Christian historian Elaine] Pagels explained that the four gospel writers of the New Testament probably wrote between 70 and 100 A.D. These were the years following the Roman defeat of the Jews, which left the Temple and the center of Jerusalem in ruins. Acts of sedition by the Jews against their conquerors were met with swift execution. As a result, Pagels said, the Gospels, which were intended not as history but as preaching, as religious propaganda to win followers for the teachings of Christ, portrayed the conflict of the Passion as one between Jesus and the Jewish people, led by Caiaphas. And, though it was the Roman occupiers, under Pontius Pilate, who possessed ultimate political and judicial power in Judea, they are described in the Gospels—and, more starkly, in Gibson’s film–as relatively benign.”

Frank Rich: “Thus we see the gospel according to Mel. If you criticize his film and the Jew-baiting by which he promoted it, you are persecuting him — all the way to the bank. If he says that he wants you killed, he wants your intestines ‘on a stick’ and he wants to kill your dog — such was his fatwa against me in September — not only is there nothing personal about it but it’s an act of love. And that is indeed the message of his film. ‘The Passion’ is far more in love with putting Jesus’ intestines on a stick than with dramatizing his godly teachings, which are relegated to a few brief, cryptic flashbacks.”

The Washington Post: “The District school system is investigating allegations that a teacher at a Southeast elementary school showed sixth-grade students excerpts of the R-rated movie ‘The Passion of the Christ.'”

The Miami Herald: A man in Jacksonville sold out of all Passion-related merchandise.

Reuters: Passion still #1, moves past $200 million mark.

After much writing, revising, and a particularly nasty stomach ache (which may have had something to do with my recent dietary transition to more substantial viands), I went through my back issues of The New Yorker, a stack so severely vertiginous that it threatened to ransack me in the night shortly after transmuting into a carnivorous, vengeful, buckram-bound collected periodical requiring all attentions.

I discovered an exceptionally well-written profile of Lyle Lovett. The profile was written by Alec Wilkinson. At the age of 24, Wilkinson was fortunate enough to befriend the late William Maxwell. (In fact, Wilkinson wrote a memoir about this entitled My Mentor: A Young Man’s Friendship with William Maxwell. Here’s an excerpt.)

I’m not much of a Lovett fan, but Wilkinson is such an incredible, omnivorous observer that I found myself completely submerged into the story. Here’s Wilkinson describing nearly every nicety within Lovett’s house:

The house is furnished sparely. In the parlor, the principal adornments are two saddles, each in a corner on a sawhorse. A plaque on the kitchen wall that says “Beware of Bull” commemorates an encounter Lovett and his uncle Calvin had two years ago with a bull in the pasture behind the house. They had delivered a check to a bulldozer operator who was digging a ditch. Walking back across the field, they discussed a pecan tree that had no leaves when it should have and whether it had to come out. The bull walked slowly toward them. Lovett had found the bull in the pasture as a day-old calf. The calf had followed him as he walked through the herd looking for its mother, and when no cow acknowledged it Lovett decided to raise it on a bottle. Once the bull turned two, Lovett stayed out of its way, since it was playful and was big enough to hurt someone without meaning to. Klein, who is sixty-nine, has worked with cattle all his life, so Lovett felt, as the bull approached, that if there was any reason to be worried Klein would tell him. “Usually, you throw a hat down on the ground or slap your leg,” Klein says, “and a bull will stop long enough for you to leave.”

I won’t dare reveal what happened to Klein, Lovett, and the bull. You’ll have to read the whole thing yourself. But this is the kind of descriptive detail segueing into gripping tale that is the mark of a top-notch writer. Wilkinson certainly picked up a lot from Maxwell. And I was so impressed by his prose that I’m going to try and track down everything the man’s ever written. Anybody interested in creative nonfiction needs to check this guy out.

“What is more, in all three cases, the more demanding the form of [church] involvement — actual attendance as compared to formal membership, for example — the greater the decline. In effect, the classic institution of American civic life, both religious and secular, have been ‘hollowed out.’ Seen from without, the institutional edifice appears virtually intact — little decline in professions of faith, formal membership down just a bit, and so on. When examined more closely, however, it seems clear that decay has consumed the load-bearing beams of our civic infrastructure.” — Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone

Why isn’t there a church for atheists and agnostics? Here we are living in a nation that purports to celebrate the freedom of religion, and yet those who decide to abstain from religion altogether are denied a public place of worship (or, rather, non-worship). We all know that churches actually front as places to meet people (provided, of course, that any given church, as most are, is open to newcomers). And yet while churches have become “tolerant” in opening up their doors to all walks of life, the church concept has failed to take a cue from Flannery O’Connor and whip up a Church Without Christ.

Where are the Churches Without Religion? True, Universal Unitarians come close. But I’m talking about a public hall that isn’t hell-bent on serving up insufferable hymns and slack Sunday morning service. A place that ultimately functions as a nexus point for decent people, without the required commitment to a deity.

Then again, who am I to generalize on the subject? Perhaps there is some comparative basis here. Likewise, the nature of social networks within these inner halls are ripe for examination.

These ruminations stem from some major thinking over the last several weeks on the subject and another long-term project that will replace Miguel Cohen’s Sunday rantings with something more observed and interesting. The idea, to give credit where credit is due, came from my sister. More to come.

Okay, I’m breaking the embargo again and then I shall again deactivate the Internet and return to the hard and happy world of revision.

Here in San Francisco, Spanganga Theater is putting on live recreations of Twilight Zone episodes. They’ll be performing two every weekend. (It started this week.) Upcoming productions include the paranoid Shatner romp “Nightmare on 20,000 Feet” and another great episode involving moral deterioration, “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.” SF Weekly has more. Each episode is being staged by a different director and slate of actors. And there are multiple Rod Serlings. This looks like a lot of fun.

Not only can Maud be found in this Sunday’s Post, but as Ron notes, the Times has gone ga-ga over Vollman, albeit mammoth nonfiction Vollman. (And, on the whole, this Sunday looks as if it has considerably more fiction coverage than the last three weeks.) Is there hope for the NYTBR? Has Keller been listening? I’m positive that the gang over at the Saloon will have a tally and a summation of this interesting new development.

It’s official: most popular bloggers are thieves. It ain’t just link poaching either. (And because I try not to be a thief, via MeFi.)

Also, who knew? (via Wonkette)

One more thing: Am I the only one who thinks that John Garfield was the Keanu of his time? Garfield has exactly two expressions he resorts to: looking up and looking down. This limited yet distracting dichotomy has worked against my total enjoyment of such films as The Postman Always Rings Twice and Body and Soul (and it’s particularly shameful in the latter case). When Garfield offers the rare expression working against the two looks, it comes across as a pretty boy using all six brain cells in his arsenal to come up with something tantamount to the worst community theatre histrionics. Garfield often looks pained when he attempts this, as if he’s suffering from hemorrhoids. And his posturing is egregious when he’s trying to come off as a tough guy.

I could be totally wrong on this, but frankly I just don’t understand why John Garfield should be regarded. Give me the underrated Steve Cochran or even straight-shooter Robert Cummings any day.

Okay, now I’m really outta here.

Ruthless deadlines keep me away from the blog until Monday. I’m not permitted one post, one word, one link until this work backlog’s caught up (the downside of getting well). So sayeth the self-discipline imp cracking the whip. I wish Tony Clifton would come in and guest blog while I’m away, but alas. Enjoy some of the fine folks on the left.

No, Tina. “Eventoid” is a dumb word. Not even Safire on his most addled afternoon could sanction it.

After years bouncing around the courts, the Neil Gaiman-Todd McFarlane trial has wrapped. Heroes can be copyrighted. Gaiman has won $2-5 million from being screwed over. After paying attorney’s fees, Gaiman’s devoting the remaining sum over to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Gaiman, now in the running for Coolest Guy on the Planet, has been called “a shameful opportunist” by McFarlane. “I’m nice too,” said McFarlane. “Just not as nice as Neil.”

With Darren Aronofsky, he helped wow and depress the hell out of filmgoers with Requiem for a Dream. Now hard-boiled novelist Hubert Selby, Jr. is back with Fear X. Nicolas Refn is the director. John Turturro stars. Kubrick’s cameraman, Larry Smith, was enlisted. Selby co-wrote the script. And instead of the Kornos Quartet, it’s Brian Eno on the soundtrack. “The movie is very, very, very depressing,” said the Telegraph. “But it’s also very good. Even our harshest critic couldn’t get out of bed for several days.”

The Age talks with Andrea Levy. Her novels are inspired by racial identity, much of it related to her parents coming from Jamaica to Britain, thinking that they would be considered white, only to be singled out.

Here’s a new angle for an Anne Rice profile: her relationship with her late husband.

Reason No. 3,624 to Vote for Kerry: States are getting creative with their budgets. Denied resources by a federal government too busy cutting taxes for the rich and spending its way out of control, Alabama has an unusual idea. In an effort to buy school textbooks, a Bingo for Books proposal is on the table.

A Pennsylvania public library has placed five sexual instruction books on the reference shelves, rather than the stacks. Now residents hoping to learn about positions other than missionary or the joys of gay sex will have to do so at a public refectory table, instead of the privacy of their own homes. The number of successful orgasms in Broomall, PA is expected to drop by 16% over the next year.

A chat with J.K. Rowling revealed the following: There may be more than seven books. Harry Potter will continue growing up. Harry Potter will enter a Hogwarts halfway house.

So who is National Book Critics Award winner Edward Jones?

1. He received a telephone message from his agent urging him to continue.
2. Here’s an excerpt. The novel, for those who don’t know, is about a black slave owner.
3. Jones began to write after being let go from a job he held for 19 years condensing articles for a trade journal. The novel has sold 100,000 copies.
4. Jones is 53 and lives alone in a Washington, D.C. apartment.
5. He grew up poor, moving “18 times in 18 years.” His mother could not read or write.
6. Jones couldn’t make friends, so he read books (including comic books).
7. Here’s an NPR link for audiophiles.

And the winner is Edward Jones!

Additional winners:

General Nonfiction: Paul Hendrickson, Sons of Mississippi
Biography/Autobiography: William Taubman, Kruschev: The Man and His Era
Poetry: Susan Stewart, Columbarium
Criticism: Rebecca Solnit, River of Shadows

I’ll have more on Jones during tomorrow morning’s update.

Since the Hag likes Cafe Press so much, Return of the Reluctant proudly joins this populist consumerism.

Ladies and gentlemen, the official “I’m A Bitch” T-shirt.

Leave it to the trusty OGIC to have some good inside New Yorker juice (via today’s WSJ). Back in 1966, Murray Schumach prepared a lengthy profile on Wallace Shawn. But editor Arthur Gelb caved and gave Shawn article approval. Results: a New Yorker editor holed up with enmity, months of unsuccessful negotiations, and an article that never made it into print. The lesson is unequivocal. But it still dismays me that so many editors cut this kind of deal.

A number of authors, including JK Rowling, Philip Pullman and Vikram Seth, are leading a coalition against the removal of retail prices from books. Philip Pullman notes that “books are not eggs,” midlist authors would suffer, and royalties would be more creatively calculated.

There’s actually a simpler way to look at the issue: Does anybody really want to go into a bookstore and be surrounded by books with terrible price tags besmirching their exterior? The affixing paste may ruin the cover. Or the pricetag might become so prominent as to destroy a carefully designed cover. Worse still, the name of a book or an author might be blotted out due to some rushed, underpaid bookstore clerk threatened with a flogging.

Fiction coverage isn’t the only thing getting shafted by the Gray Lady. Ted Rall’s editorial cartoons have been pulled because the Times wants to ensure that its content “does not offend the reasonable sensibillities of our audience.”

Man, between this and the NYTBR flap, I am this close to cancelling my Sunday subscription in protest.

(via Romenesko)

There’s a new neighbor on the lit blog block: Rake’s Progress.

Publisher’s Lunch reported this morning that Houghton Mifflin issued a press release that sales were down from last year, with the sentence, “The decrease was due mainly to lower Tolkien book sales and lower sales of children’s titles.” However, in confirming the info, I noticed that the press release had been removed. Is it possible that Houghton Mifflin is deliberately withholding some pertinent info and that Tolkien has lust its potency? As Uncle Matt Grambo might say, DEVELOPING.

[UPDATE: Never mind. Here’s the release.]

Tonight, the National Book Critics Circle finalists will be announced. Among the nominees is one of my favorite contemporary novelists, Richard Powers, whom the Chicago Tribune catches up with. Powers, the Tribune notes, really talks in the same cerebral way as his books. That isn’t really a revelation for Powers fans. But what’s really hilarious about the interview is how the Tribune sexes Powers up: “His pale green eyes resemble chips of stained glass. His fingers are long and thin. His hair is dark brown, with the occasional thread of gray, and it falls in a thick curtain, without so much as a hint of curl. Powers, in fact, seems composed entirely of straight lines and right angles: He’s tall and lean, and he moves with the efficient grace of an animated T-square.”

What next? David Foster Wallace described as “a bracing, tobacco-chomping stallion” for GQ?

Even so, it’s good to see Powers getting this kind of major coverage months after his last novel, The Time of Our Singing, was issued quietly in hardback (and all this is a month or two after the trade paperback edition).

The Book Babes respond to the petition. Margo writes that “literary conversation has been left too long in the hands of an elite whose approach is too stuffy for my taste.” I couldn’t agree more. Which is why it is every literary journalists’s duty to maintain literary standards that can be imparted to more people. It’s taking the good aspects of the Oprah Book Club idea and raising the bar a bit, getting people excited about books without coming across as a pretentious or ditsy ass. People want to read, and they want to read good stuff. They’re always on the lookout for new authors. And the most ardent readers hope to find books and ideas that challenge them. These two have managed to get away with soft interviews with Norman Mailer and Joe Eszterhas, have perpetuated largely uninformed ideas of books, and kept up profiles of popular and middlebrow books that people would read regardless. And that is why I object to these self-described bimbos.

Again, I urge people to sign the petition. Get two people at Poynter who know what the hell they’re talking about and who won’t devote precious column-inches to whether a middle-aged woman can be a babe or not. Which wasn’t the point of Mark’s petition.

[UPDATE: Comrade Mark responds in pointed and hilarious form.]

More Rankin. Okay, provided I can find the first Rebus novel, deal me in (in no small part, thanks to Sarah).

The New York Daily News: Women Who Blog. Lots of swell folks, but no Rack?

Years ago, a manuscript thought to be authored by a white abolitionist turned out to be written by former slave Harriet Jacobs. Literary scholar Jean Fagan Yellin published the MS (Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself) and the book sold 200,000 copies. Yellin’s getting a grant from the Ford Foundation to publish all of Jacobs’ papers.

Two books about the notorious John Gardner are compared.

Write a well-regarded novel in Japan, and get stalked.

And digital tools are being used to restore texts from a Georgian monastery.

The Free Dictionary comes very close to beating out dictionary.com. For one thing, there aren’t any pop-ups. But the real geeky advantage they have is the contextual examples from classic literature. For almost every word, you’ll get at least three quotes from Wilkie Collins, O. Henry or Mark Twain, and you’ll be able to click on the precise place they appear. There are some minor problems with this approach. Davenport, for example, seems to bring up character names and the city rather than the sofa. But short of paying big bucks for The OED Online, this isn’t too bad of a substitute.

Neglected to mention it, but Choire’s at the NYTBR.

J.M. Coetzee came out of the woodworks for the Adelaide Festival of Arts Writers’ Week, only to scare the bejesus out of people. Coetzee insisted that he will never give a lecture again, and that he would snap necks if anyone suggested that his Nobel speech or anything coming out of his mouth was a lecture. Coetzee wieleded a truncheon while speaking, randomly beating empty chairs between questions, and sometimes howling to the moon just before stating a declarative sentence. The Nobel winner can no longer be seen during the day. There are unconfirmed reports that fresh blood could be seen trickling down the corners of his mouth.

Jennifer Graham hates Dr. Seuss, noting facetiously that he was a failed novelist because To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street was rejected 43 times. Although I think the figure was actually 24 times, even 43 times is still par for the course. Alex Haley received 200 rejections before writing Roots. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was rejected 121 times. Silence of the Lambs was rejected 28 times. The Naked and the Dead was rejected 12 times. Catch-22 was rejected 21 times (hence, the eponymous twenty-two). And, as an experiment (well before his big scandal), Jerzy Kosinski changed the names of the author and manuscript to see if his book would sell. Thirteen agents and fourteen publishers rejected it.

The moral of the story: Just as one can’t judge a book by its cover, it’s impossible to weigh a manuscript’s merits based on the number of rejections.

Spider-Man 3 is in the works. No word yet on whether Michael Chabon will be involved with this one, though Chabon himself doesn’t know what’s happened to his words on the second film. This confidence does suggest that we might see a continual story arc picked up from the second film, similar to Mario Puzo’s work in the first two Superman films. Variety reports that no director or actors have been signed, and the script has not been finalized. Furthermore, Harry Knowles has not yet bombarded the Web with half-assed rumors, near-lies and “inside sources.” So perhaps it’s premature to report anything before the hype.

Not only is more hip-hop lit being published, but it’s selling.

New NYRoB up. To be read later: Richard Horton’s “The Dawn of McScience”.

Jayson gets petty, claiming that quotes run in the Times broke the embargo and committed copyright infringement. The article quoted a total of 156 words from Blair’s book, roughly half the number of words quoted by The Nation in a precedent-setting 1985 Supreme Court decision. Things here aren’t helped by Bill Keller, when the ass claimed that copies of Blair’s book “have begun to circulate.” Chip McGrath’s review will run on March 14. Given how petty Blair and New Millenium have been with the Master’s House, I hope McGrath gives this little punkass hell.

First, Adam Moss to New York, now Frank Rich?

Sara Nelson weighs in on the Amazon flap. She dishes some dirt and brings up the obvious question of why Amazon is overinflated. But isn’t it a bit ironic that she’s using column-inches to plug her book in a column probing tainted influence?

The final word on style:

…

!!!

???

were all so fatigued down here jimmy why dont you crack corn no i dont care seez there sit on my lap with the monkey yes he was good and he grows too if only you understood virility as much as i do even if i’m older than you and yes yes yes bust my basketballs and replace them with breasts mighty casabas and a large pair of pantaloons pantalettes panties pants trouser snakes in the garter strap it on hard backwards see, that way lies excess. it was a tale twice told by idiots signifying nothing. yet how easy twas before. when all the hype glassed emetic, hermetically sealed beneath sugar sugar. aw honey honey now forever associated with bastard bee, smart-looking dapper wings not a bad bone in the little insect’s body. there he is strutting around for some cereal. it’s enough to make you quit eating all this commercial rubbish, but then try and walk a day without passing the time.

the time had come to shoot the television. why waste hours on that sort of thing? in two hours, you could probably have some long really nice sex, unprotected if you were willing to take a risk. wow, kid, that’s gutsy. or in that time you could read half a mystery novel, provided it was entertaining, fast-moving, typeset with very wide line spacing and fairly short. but is that just as bad as the glass orb in the little room?

or you could have a nifty conversation with a stranger, assuming that the stranger sticks around and was willing to spill things about his/her/its life. most people are, you know.

but wither testicles? yes, it’s time for the operation. what you’ll need to do is slice the side then scoop in with a spoon DON’T FORGET THE MORPHINE remove some fluid that causes this hernia nightmare and then drill DON’T FORGET THE MORPHINE or if you’re daring wander about like tom green with only one. what would it be like to have three buttocks and one testicle? what would it be like to have breasts? beyond staring at the mirror all day, i’d probably spend all that time testing their sensitivity. i’d also see how well i’d do DON’T FORGET THE X in a wet t-shirt contest. maybe.

???

hey, trio. get lost. we’re trying to free associate.

!!!

yeah, you too. don’t be shocked. don’t pretend as if this is anything other than rainy day speculation.

…

agreed

The Literary Saloon takes the piss out of Carole Matthews and product placement in literature. (via Mark)

Just so everybody’s clear (because my heart plummeted to the ground when I saw it in the bookstore today, only to realize it was a different book), there are actually two novels named The Cloud Atlas. One is a first novel by Liam Callanan. The other is written by Ghostwritten author David Mitchell. Since Mitchell has the hype of a million gods right now, fair is fair. Here’s a Detroit Free Press review for the Callanan book, and here’s Callanan’s website.

A self-pimping page for all outside writings is in the works, as is a page for the play and an edrants redesign. But for now, here’s the latest review. More are on the way through various outlets.

Publisher’s Lunch reports that word on the street has it that Chip McGrath’s successor will be named in a day or two. And McGrath himself will be reviewing Jayson Blair’s book.