Contrary to claims that an excerpt of Jonathan Lethem’s Dissident Gardens in the New York Times’ T Magazine marked the first time that the Gray Lady had included the f-word in print, Jim Romenesko points out that the paper runs the expletive all the fucking time.
A Shanghai metro line has introduced its own library that allows riders to take out a book when they get on the train and return it when they’ve reached their destination. From the Los Angeles Times: “Special bookshelves are installed at the metro stations, containing rows books for the taking. There's no registration necessary, and no fee; readers are simply encouraged to make a small charitable donation when taking a book.”
A new biography of J.D. Salinger co-authored by Shane Salerno and David Shields (and set to coincide with the forthcoming Salinger biography) gets its first dismissive review in the New York Times. Michiko Kakutani says that the book’s decision to mix interviews and excerpts creates a “Rashomon-like portrait of Salinger, but it also makes for a loosey-goosey, Internet-age narrative with diminished authorial responsibility. Instead of assiduously sifting fact from conjecture and trying to sort out discrepancies, Mr. Salerno and Mr. Shields are often content to lay back and simply let sources speak for themselves.”
At the time of his death, Elmore Leonard was working on a novel, tentatively titled Blue Dreams. Now there’s talk that his son, Peter, might finish it.
What does what you read say about you? This Daily News headline says it all: “Bradley Cooper Reads Lolita Alongside Much Younger Girlfriend.”
Even though Saul Bellow, Nabokov, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Ursula Le Guin and Joyce Carol Oates were all repeat contributors to Playboy, Amy Grace Lloyd says that she still found herself defending the magazine to basically everybody after she took the job as literary editor there.
