Recommended Reading: “The Pumpkin Tree” by Robert Wrigley.
“Great pendulous melons dangled like gods”
Honor My Profession
For Your Viewing Pleasure: an animated lecture by Kurt Vonnegut in which he talks about man-eating lampreys and warheads filled with sperm. It is a lot like what it sounds like.
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Glitz and Glamor
Red carpet, DJs, Molly Ringwald – are the National Book Awards selling out?
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Dead Father
Recommended Reading: Susan Choi on a resurrected stage adaptation of Donald Barthelme’s novel Snow White.
150 New Mark Twains
Just found: 150 new Mark Twain stories, written when the author was a young newspaperman in San Francisco.
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Culture Shock
“When it comes to living in a democracy, Nato Thompson argues, nothing affects us more directly and more powerfully than culture. Culture suffuses the world we live in, from TV to music to advertising to sports. And all these things, Thompson writes in his new book, Culture as Weapon, ‘influence our emotions, our actions, and our very understanding of ourselves as citizens.'”