• Since Tao is chronicling all, here are the windows currently open on my screen: Windows Explorer (open to a directory of audio files), OpenOffice Calc (containing a spreadsheet that lists what I have to do this month), Windows Explorer (Search — I was trying to find a graphic that I created years ago and did not think to Alt-F4 this window), Audacity (a file that I’ve been intermittently mixing for the past thirty hours, working on it five minutes at a time), Thunderbird, Firefox (Bloglines), and Firefox (the window in which I am now typing this post). This represents a pretty typical setup, although I generally work with about ten windows open. In typing this post, I’ve decided to Alt-F4 the Search window, because there was no reason for me to keep it open. I suppose this was laziness on my part, and I guess I should apologize or something, perhaps to the computer. I haven’t downloaded any audio files like Tao, but I suppose I should probably do this soon. I finished reading one of the books I have to review about an hour ago. I have not eaten or drank anything in about six hours, although I succumbed to a few handfuls of peanuts. Before that, about twelve hours ago, I had kingfish (sauteed with a bunch of produce)*, broccoli, and rice — which I cooked myself and was quite tasty. (And there’s some leftover fish in the fridge I may cook up later this week.) I do read Ron Silliman’s blog, and in fact found a semi-interesting link to it, which I included in this roundup. I’m going to be interviewing an author today. I’ve only slept about four hours and I may go back to bed. But I’m strangely excited and ready to tap dance or something. Alas, there are very few places to tap dance at six in the morning. And I don’t want my neighbor downstairs to wake up when she hears my thumping from her ceiling. Never mind that she and her boyfriend sometimes fuck at 3:30 AM and are quite noisy and sometimes actually turn me on a tad and make me smile because of the beautiful sounds they make. But I keep odd hours. So I don’t mind. Right now, it is relatively silent. There is no fucking going on, but there’s a minor din of traffic I can hear just off Flatbush. I often hear the roll of trucks and even the pleasant horn of a semi even at this hour. There is no Death-O-Meter, however. In large part because I don’t think many people have been killed near this section of Flatbush. But I am only offering speculation and not facts, and you should probably not believe me. For all I know, people have been killed — perhaps many of them — and I’m just allowing my optimism to get in the way of ferreting out the facts.
• Josh Getlin asks whether Hollywood is playing it safe in acquiring books to adapt into films. Particularly those pertaining to Iraq.
• Memo to Chip McGrath: What the hell does Edmund Wilson’s sex life have to do with his criticism? If you care so much about who Wilson was boffing in his seventies (two paragraphs!), maybe you’re the one who’s the “literary hobbyist.” (Found via this article, via Wet Asphalt)
• Speaking of which, here’s what Updike has to say on the subject: “When an author has devoted his life to expressing himself, and, if a poet or a writer of fiction, has used the sensations and critical events of his life as his basic material, what of significance can a biographer add to the record?”
• So are any of these characters gay? Or will we learn about their sexual orientation years after this book is released and sales have dropped?
• This year’s Guardian First Fiction shortlist. (via Three Percent)
• Are you kidding? Romance is perfectly appropriate for Halloween! (he said days later)
• Does Guy de Maupassant’s “Le Horla” rank alongside Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw?
• If you think Depp’s assaults on books is bad in the atrocious Roman Polanski film The Ninth Gate, consider Polanski’s assaults on Arturo Perez-Reverte’s great novel, The Club Dumas, arguably worse in dumbing the book down.
• Physicists on ghosts, vampires, and zombies.
• Sorry, kids, the Led Zeppelin reunion has been postponed. Both Robert Plant and Jimmy Page are suffering from a case of fractured hubris, and hope to perform once their collective egos have been amped up to 11.
• Harper Lee has been awarded the highest civilian honor from the President: 24/7 access to the Lincoln Bedroom. And this only hours after the President finally had one of his advisers finish reading To Kill a Mockingbird. But it’s the thought that counts.
• The Winter Blog Blast Tour.
• How exactly do you read Ed Baker? (via Ron Silliman)
• Another of your favorite children’s shows, The Electric Company, is being recycled. (via The Shifted Librarian)
• When a dinner costs more than a half & half from a high-priced callgirl, “actually quite a deal” is the most telling sign that you’re cut off from democracy and common sense. Particularly when you’re the Best Young Sommelier in America.

* — Speaking of kingfish, I have to say that I like this photo quite a lot. Not just because the woman in the photo is fairly attractive in a Naomi Watts sort of way and probably having a good time (although these are admittedly factors), but because that is a very big kingfish and its horizontal juxtaposition is absolutely incongruous with the attempted cheesecake pose.

• Recovering from many martinis.
• An effort now, a day after the lovely holiday, to atone for the lack of literary news. Of late, this place has been an unapologetic dumping ground for YouTube videos and decidedly non-literary subjects. The most recent Segundo podcasts have tilted towards more nonfiction authors. I leave loyal readers to speculate as to whether this represents a certain fatigue towards fiction on the part of the proprietor or merely an effort to stretch out. If the former conclusion stands, permit me to register my dutiful plaudits for Jess Walter’s excellent novel, Citizen Vince, which was accidentally purchased a year ago instead of The Zero, thanks to a certain devious bookish person who led me astray in the right way. Vince has lived up to its accidental promise. (Let this be a lesson for all of us. Too often we are mired in the latest contemporary titles and the collective foci views “contemporary” as “the last six months.” But there are plenty of great titles extending well before!)
• With Halloween in mind, I had intended to offer an audio reading of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Rats in the Walls.” Alas, time and deadlines got the better of me, and I was unable to finish this in time for October 31. Nevertheless, in considering the many horror writers who have thrilled and tingled, you can do no better than this archive of H.P. Lovecraft’s work a day later and a fun-size Snickers bar short.
• Scott is correct to point out that the latest issue of the NYRB has only one fiction title under review (unless you count Eugene O’Neill) and that it is — yawn, he yawned — Alice Sebold’s latest title. That one of our most seemingly august publications would abdicate its fiction coverage for wonky wankage, obvious choices, and, to douse the bleeding mess with copious salt, hire the perspicacious Larry McMurty to squander his acumen on an eccentric Hollywood actress’s photography is indeed a sign that the NYRB is, at least with this issue, neither seeming nor august. If this is the NYRB‘s new way, then it would seem that Bob Silvers may be an even greater fiction-reviewing offender than Sam Tanenhaus in running a publication with both “New York” and “Books” in the title. Further, one must ask where all the women are? Eighteen pieces here and only two women. It seems that Tanenhaus isn’t the only one interested in stag clubs. Okay, Silvers, you’re now on watch.
• As the good Orthofer notes, there ain’t no fiction coverage in the New Republic these days. (And that sentence could be worse. I stop at double negatives. Others go further.)
• Jim Thompson’s lost Hollywood years. Let us not forget that it was Jim Thompson’s ear for dialogue that helped Kubrick immensely in his early days. Thompson was the co-writer of the great films, The Killing and Paths of Glory. The latter film isn’t often associated with Thompson, but I have a feeling that it wouldn’t be hailed as a classic without Thompson’s input. Aside from the story structure devised by Thompson, consider the line: “See that cockroach? Tomorrow morning, we’ll be dead and it’ll be alive. It’ll have more contact with my wife and child than I will. I’ll be nothing, and it’ll be alive.” Can you imagine anyone but Thompson writing that? (via Sarah)
• A hot new issue of Hot Metal Bridge. At auspicious times like this, I wish I were a sexy woman with a white Marilyn-like flowing skirt strutting my sinuous legs dangerously across a metal bridge to draw greater attention to the offerings inside. Alas, I’m merely a balding thirtysomething in Brooklyn with an odd voice. Of course, if someone can offer a sufficient argument that me wearing a white Marilyn-like flowing skirt will draw greater attention to Hot Metal Bridge, I might be persuaded go forward. Halloween may be over, but that won’t stop me from dressing up. Although I’d need an hour to get the lipstick right.
• Speaking of one the parties involved with the last item, Carolyn points to this inside dirt involving the Quills. Yes, indeed, Ann Curry cares too much. I can feel her solicitude strangling me from beyond the screen. Then again, when you’re a homophobic anchor, perhaps “caring too much” involves not really caring much at all.
• Joshua Glenn has a toothpick conspiracy involving Henry James and thankfully he isn’t snobbish about the toothpick.
• And your pal the Rake wonders whether Denis Johnson talks real talk. I’ll have to agree with the Rake that the quoted exchange sounds like a bunch of macho types planning to contemplate a foot massage. I likewise don’t mind stylized dialogue along these lines. But I will say that Johnson’s dialogue is more real than the breathless dialogue (thank you, Aaron Fucking Sorkin, for spawning this regrettable trend!) that one encounters on television with troubling frequency these days, which leads me wondering if the real-life antecedents for these characters are cokeheads, chowderheads, or people terrified of revealing their mistakes or insecurities. You know, the way real people do. But I have every faith that the beats will go on. One of these days.