Lit Mag Unlocked

Matthew Shaer takes a gander at the history of book pulping.

Recommended Reading: Zoë Heller and Francine Prose discuss a writer’s moral obligation and responsibility to art.

Michael Chabon takes on Finnegans Wake in The New York Review of Books. This is mandatory reading, class.

“Aspiring journalists tend to worship at the altar of Joan Didion,” writes Heather Havrilesky (who some of you may know as Polly) in the latest issue of Bookforum. The fact that so many writers look up to Didion as an example necessitates that the lit world find at least one offbeat alternative. In Havrilesky’s eyes, that alternative is obvious: the late Nora Ephron was the anti-Didion, she argues.