Elmore Leonard is set to receive the 2012 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, which has been awarded annually by the National Book Foundation since 1988. The medal is intended to recognize the achievements of “a person who has enriched our literary heritage over a life of service, or a corpus of work.”
Elmore Leonard’s Contribution
Our Sources are Reliable
Wikipedia states that its ultimate mission is to collect all the knowledge in the world. The biases of its users may earn the site a few jabs, but if a number of studies which compare the site’s articles to those of professional encyclopedias are reliable indicators, its content is accurate enough to satisfy the needs of most users. But now the whole project may be in trouble for a simple and very odd reason -- it's apparently done so well that most of its contributors have gone home.
●
●
The New Yorker Says No to The New Yorker
The greatest trick David Cameron ever pulled was getting The New Yorker to reject itself.
●
●
Photographing the Cool Kids
What does it mean to be cool? According to scholar Joel Dinerstein, it means a person who conveys “relaxed intensity.” Using this definition, Dinerstein and Frank Goodyear III curated a photography exhibition of "American Cool" at National Portrait Gallery. The portraits feature everyone from Joan Didion to David Byrne.
●
●
Talking Covers with Jonathen Lethem
Sean Manning (of Talking Covers) hosted a discussion with Jonathan Lethem last week at LA’s Last Bookstore. You can check out video and audio of the event over here, and the post also features an exclusive glimpse at the cover art for Lethem’s forthcoming novel Dissident Gardens. (Bonus: a look at Dissident Gardens in our Great 2013 Book Preview.)
●
●
Titanic Fixes
Neil deGrasse Tyson just continues to fix the world, one piece of astronomical minutiae at a time. Theatergoers sitting through screenings of Titanic 3-D will no longer see an incorrect star field thanks to a "snarky" email sent by Dr. Tyson to director James Cameron.
●
●