In 1952, John Steinbeck wrote that Al Capp, the cartoonist and Lil’ Abner creator, might well have been the best writer working in the world at the time. In the Times, Andy Webster reviews a new biography of Capp, which reveals that underneath it all lay “a toxic chip on his shoulder.”
Contrarian
Nicholson Baker Overload
In addition to House of Holes‘ recent coverage in the New York Review of Books and Open Letters Monthly (and on The Millions), the latest edition of The Paris Review features an interview with “mad scientist of smut” Nicholson Baker. (You can check out an excerpt here.) But for those still unsatisfied, Adam Wilson has assembled a canon of raunchy literature.
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Barrelhouse to Start Paying
Beginning with issue 12, Barrelhouse will start paying contributors. Prepare your submissions, everybody.
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Offshoots
Recommended Reading: Our own Elizabeth Minkel on Sherlock and fan fiction. You can also read another essay of hers on fan fiction here at The Millions.
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Den Father
By now the overlap between writers and drug addicts is pretty well-known, but it wasn’t so well-known back when Thomas De Quincey wrote Confessions of an English Opium Eater. In the essay, De Quincey admitted that not only was he addicted to opium, he suspected he’d ingested more of the substance than any other man save Coleridge. (Incidentally, we reviewed a novel by Year in Reading alumnus Jeet Thayil that largely took place in an opium den.)
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Although I liked “Li’l Abner” the comic strip and the Broadway show (my parents took me when I was pretty young), anyone who ever saw Al Capp even briefly on TV in the 50s and 60s could see he was not a nice person or even a decent human being.