paper trail

Jul 18, 2011 @ 4:00:00 am

Via The Washington Post

Saturday was the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of Catcher in the Rye. To commemorate the event, writer and Salinger scholar Michael Moats contemplates the origins of Holden Caulfield.

The Los Angeles Review of Books runs the first segment of Mike Davis’s nine-part biography of Harrison Gray Otis, an early twentieth century newspaper mogul, a “wrathful gargoyle with a walrus moustache and Custer goatee,” and the so-called “inventor” of modern Los Angeles.

You probably won’t remember this: Psychologists at Columbia University have found that people are significantly less likely to retain information if they know they can look it up online.

Borders may be out of business by the end of the week.

The Daily Beast examines how the Wall Street Journal has dealt with reporting on the misdeeds of its parent company: “It stinks. It makes our stomachs churn,” says one Journal staffer of the phone hacking scandal.