Wednesday Linkstorm
Happy belated to Thomas Pynchon! Birthday wishes come across the sky. It's happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.Related: it looks like you missed out on Pynchon in Public Day, the one day where it would have finally been appropriate to wear that homemade Tristero shirt out in public.Goodbye Maurice Sendak. See you at the wild rumpus in the sky. (The afterlife isn't sounding that bad, actually. MCA is there too.)Want more Sendak? His Paris Review interview from 2011.The Millions has an essay about Roberto Bolano's posthumous rise to fame. Go read The Savage Ds right now so we can talk endlessly about who's the Arturo and who's the Ulises. JK, I'm of course the Arturo.Check out this slideshow of wacky book shelves. The U.S. map, you guys! The happy little whale! That circular hamster wheel with your boyfriend standing in it reading! Him: What, I always read like this. Totally normal. You: Are you sure you don't want a chair or something? Him: No no, I'm comfortable, I swear. I do this all the time.The Fox Mole scored a six figure book deal. If you aren't following this thing start here.If you want your father to finally like and respect you, pick up The Passage of Power, the latest installment in Robert Caro's LBJ series. By all accounts it's great.Also from the Times, Magic Hours, a new book of essays by Tom Bissell looks excellent. That is, if you can get through this review. Actual phrase used: "A mash-up of slacker insouciance and hermeneutic vigor." Thanks, New York Times! The word of the day is "hermeneutic." As in: "I just had to look up a hermeneutic word on the hermeneutic dictionary. What a hermeneutic pain in the ass!"Why not throw in a couple bones to Recommended Reading, this sweet lil project Electric Literature is doing. Kickstarter here.Hey writers, this is neat. Sign up for this listserve thingy. Every day they choose one of the thousands of members to write anything they want and it goes out to everyone on the list. Cool right? Tomorrow could be the day you finally go public with your Jack Ruby/Enron/Starbucks conspiracy theory. Shit's about to get cracked wide open!--Erin Somers