One measure of a writer may be the quality of the thinking he elicits in others. Here, in advance of The Pale King, is an uncommonly perceptive BBC radio documentary about David Foster Wallace.
Listening to David Foster Wallace
Springfield, Springfield, It’s a Hell of a Town!
In a big reveal to devout fans like me, The Simpsons creator Matt Groening finally copped to the fictional Springfield’s real-life inspiration: Springfield, Oregon. Of course this matter has been widely pondered before, and was perhaps even answered by Paul Nelson and his cohorts at SNPP.com.
Dispatch from Italy
Over at Asymptote Journal, Aamer Hussein discusses three well-kept Italian secrets who aren’t Elena Ferrante. Pair with Cora Currier’s Millions essay on reading Italy through Ferrante’s books.
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Billy Pilgrim Is Unstuck
“How can a horrific event, so monstrous it seems incomprehensible, be told? How does one even find the words to write about it?” For The Paris Review, Matteo Pericoli takes a look at Slaughterhouse-Five and the bridge between fiction and architecture.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Larson, Nesbø, Brown, Earle, Udall, Marlantes
Purveyor of popular nonfiction Erik Larson has a new book out this week, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin. The Snowman by Jo Nesbø is a new entry in the increasingly popular Scandinavian thriller genre. Inward-looking graphic novelist Chester Brown’s latest, Paying for It is out, and musician and actor Steve Earle can now add “novelist” to his resume with the release of I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive. And new in paperback are a pair of big books, Brady Udall’s The Lonely Polygamist and Karl Marlantes’s Matterhorn.
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Curiosities: The Governor and the Glove
Hitchens looks back at the Rushdie fatwa and its legacy of censorship.The Feltron 2008 Annual Report“The Governor and the Glove” – an encounter with BlagojovichJoseph O’Neill remembers Updike (via TEV)Ted Leo performs Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark.”The Paleolithic era of online news.TNR reviews Outliers: “It is an axiom of Malcolm Gladwell’s method that a perfect anecdote proves a fatuous rule.“
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The Books They Gave Me
It’s voyeuristic, confessional, cathartic, and sometimes downright funny. It’s The Books They Gave Me, a Tumblr where people share the books their exes gave as gifts.
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Thanks for posting that link. The documentary was very interesting — it’s a good primer explaining why DFW’s work is valuable.