In the latest issue of Harvard magazine, Nathan Heller writes about Arion Press, the last remaining “full-service letterpress in the United States.” Apparently Arion, which has “an in-house foundry where lead is melted into ingots,” sells editions of canonical titles (like Ulysses) that retail for thousands of dollars. (h/t our own Kevin Hartnett)
The New Gutenberg
DFW Details
Craig Fehrman digs up and posts the Details‘ 1996 profile of David Foster Wallace that is mentioned a few times in Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself but has until now not been available online.
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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.
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To Paraphrase Potter Stewart
“The more you take, the more you have to give back — the better the work has to be.” The New York Times features Year in Reading alum Rivka Galchen in dialogue with Anna Holmes (“You can’t always prove appropriation, but you usually know it when you see it”) on the distinction between artistic license and cultural theft. Pair with our review of Galchen’s Little Labors.
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Best American Books On Sale
Pretty good deal on Amazon today: All the e-book versions of the “Best American” books are $1.99.
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The Muse of Impossibility
“[T]he use of similes and metaphors confesses the defeat of language: we must compare because we cannot say.” -From Alberto Manguel’s stunning essay “The Muse of Impossibility” in The Threepenny Review. (via The Rumpus)
Carol Hughes to Write Memoir
Ted Hughes’s widow, Carol Hughes, intends to write a memoir about her marriage to the former poet laureate.
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Bibliotherapy for Fiction Lovers
Ceridwen Dovey asks, can reading make you happier?
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