Is this the best Christmas card in history? Several members of the Paris Review staff received cards that bore the following William Gaddis quote: “‘Merry Christmas,’ the man threatened.” (h/t Justin Alvarez)
And a Not-So-Happy New Year
Kids Leap to the Darnedest Conclusions
A mom sat her six-year-old daughter down in front of some classic books and asked her to guess the story based on the cover. The results are both charming and eerily accurate. I'm glad we at least now know what lies in the liminal space between Lev Grossman and kittens inspired by kittens.
More Anticipated Books
The eagle-eyed Scott Esposito spots fall publication dates for volumes I and II of Murakami's IQ84...and for Helen DeWitt's new novel (!), Lightning Rods, due out from New Directions.
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The Ball Is a Woman
“Now I get paid to do something I have loved since I was 4 years old. Other than my family, is there anything else I have loved so unconditionally, for so long?” Georgia Cloepfil in N+1 on the uncompromising, compromised life of the professional female athlete. See also: some thoughts about hosting the World Cup.
Some doubles adverbial terms
If you happen to be looking for a long essay on peculiar and systematically ambiguous language of contemporary writing on fine art, and it's strangely anti-local lexicon Triple Canopy's got just the thing.
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The Truth Is Here
Here's a piece of news you likely didn't see coming: David Duchovny has published a novel. Titled Holy Cow, it deals, in the words of interviewer Taffy Brodesser-Akner, with "a traumatized cow, a sassy turkey and a pig converting to Judaism." She talks with the X-Files star in this week's Times Magazine.
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Flame Out
For whatever reason, pop music (at least in the Western world) displays an inordinate fascination with people who die at a young age. At The Atlantic, Leah Sottile takes a look at our collective fixation on the mantra “Live fast, die young.”
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A New History of the Essay
“You might say we are awash in definitions of the essay and essays themselves, or to mis-paraphrase Wallace Stevens, ideas about the thing as well as the thing itself.” On The Making of the American Essay, the third and final volume of John D’Agata’s A New History of the Essay.