- Apparently, poetry couldn’t get Clive James laid. (via Ron Silliman)
- A New York vacation plan for bibliophiles. (via Rare Book News)
- Edward Gorey’s “The Trouble with Tribbles.” (via Quill and Quire)
- Apparently, the Toronto International Film Festival schedule is flummoxing cineastes, including Quiet Bubble and Roger Ebert. There also appear to be more than a few literary connections with this lineup.
- George Saunders is guest blogging at Powell’s this week.
- Persona Non Data on the Times E-Reader.
- Apparently, eBay is now censoring auctions of comics it finds objectionable. (via Occasional Superheroine)
- Joe Meno and other authors on what best captures Chicago.
- You can always count on the NYT corrections page for some unusual syntax. Today: “A film review in Weekend on Aug. 17 about ‘Marigold’ misstated its rating status.” The review is not of Marigold. It is about Marigold. It is not a film rating, but a “rating status.” Which makes me wonder whether social strata can now be applied to a film rating. (Is a PG-13 movie now considered middle-class? Or is it some benign out-of-towner entering a cocktail party at a Fifth Avenue apartment?) The Times regrets the vernacular, but this is the Times, after all.
- Jeff VanderMeer covers the Hugo Awards.
- Auden’s lost poems.
I second all of Carol Anshaw’s thoughts on the disappearing Chicago. Ironically, though, the only thing that has kept that cottage-like gas station by Wrigley Field standiing (and not demolished for more generic condos) is the piles of cash the owner reaps by renting out parking spaces to Cub fans on game days – the very same tourists who are responsible for making the city into the safe urban theme park that it’s rapidly becoming.
Too bad Gorey was never known to be an Outer Limits fan. I would’ve liked to see his Zanti Misfits.
And the fact that he’d only just gotten a television at the time he was putting his finishing touches on Dracula is of interest. Right before or right after that show opened on Broadway, Gorey went on Dick Cavett, complete with fur coat and sneakers. After reminiscing about his WWII service (which caused Dick to express surprise, to which Gorey replied: “But of course I was in the Army! Everyone was in the Army! We had a war!”), the illustrator started craning his neck and looking around the studio. “What are you looking for?” asked Dick. “Not for, but at,” said Gorey. “It’s just that I’ve never been on television before and all this is very interesting.” Or that’s how I recall the dialogue, 30 years later. It reminds of the day I came to own my first DVD, and found out I was on it – “Stone Reader.”