Why does the new Liam Neeson film use a hyphen in its title? According to AP Style, “nonstop” is one word, yet the film is marketed stateside with a hyphen stuck in the middle. At Slate, L.V. Anderson looks into a typographic mystery.
Nit-Pick
No Matter How Small
Over at The Atlantic, Lydia Millet argues for the power and legitimacy of The Lorax’s moral message. Millet believes that the heavy-handedness of activist-minded fiction like The Lorax is powerful partly due to “its shamelessness. It pulls no punches; it wears its teacher heart on its sleeve.”
Kickstarter Trumps the NEA
Kickstarter is expecting to raise more than $150 million for its users’ projects in 2012. That’s $4 million more than the “entire fiscal year 2012 budget for the National Endowment of the Arts.” Maybe it’s because the NEA is wasting all of its money on that $1.3 billion poem…
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Curiosities: Smoldering Eyebrows
E-book pricing wars continue. Sony tries to hit the Kindle where it hurts by offering cheaper e-books. Meanwhile, $0 is becoming an important price point at the Kindle store.Sam Anderson hates Thomas Pynchon.An indie bookstore fan uses our bookstore tour as a jumping-off point for a literary day in Manhattan. You can too.
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Jesse Eisenberg’s Brain
Recommended Reading: Jesse Eisenberg’s stream of conscious New Yorker short story, “A Short Story Written With Thought-to-Text Technology.” “When he was younger he used to stay late after school on Fridays and come in early on Mondays, a pattern his mother referred to with equal parts admiration and disdain as ‘studying overtime.’ Jesus, I’ve written another loser.”
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The Numbers
Some will find Publishers Weekly’s list of top selling books in 2009 endlessly fascinating. The name I was most surprised to see on the list? R. Crumb, whose The Book of Genesis Illustrated apparently sold 119,914 copies last year. (via)
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I am throwing up in my hat.
So, not only does The Paris Review now have a “booty call” tag on their blog, but certain of their editors can be seen dishing out fashion advice in the fiction issue of VICE. Party on, Paris Review. Party on.
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