Charles F. Harris, an editor and publisher at Doubleday, Random House, and Howard University Press who consistently championed black writing and published Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, and Nikki Giovanni, has died.
David Foster Wallace fans (notorious for the strength of their devotion) have been given the chance to redesign the cover of Infinite Jest for its twentieth anniversary next year. The Millions asked his publishers, “What would David have made of that decision?”, but they wisely elected not to guess.
It’s time for the New York Times magazine’s feature on those who died this year, including James Salter, Philip Levine, and the typographer Hermann Zapf, who invented Dingbats, as well as Optima, the font used on both the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the September 11 Memorial. “Does the new technology mean the serious lettering artist will be dispensable?” Zapf said of the rise of computing. “No. The alphabet remains.”
New York magazine |http://www.vulture.com/2015/12/inside-serial-season-two.html#|profiles the makers of Serial|, who decided on a new direction for Season Two, lest they “become a sort of public-radio Law & Order.”
When is erotic fiction appropriate for the holidays? Perhaps when it stars a presidential candidate, like Lacey Noonan’s A Cruzmas Carol: Enjoy.