“Its seeming ability to live without food and family”

It may comfort you to know that Susan Orlean claims to have “a sad dependence” on her iPhone. The New Yorker staff writer, who published an article (paywall) on the Twitter account Horse_ebooks this week, tells Bobby Finger that she had to buy a new battery case because she ran through the charge on her phone by the middle of the day.

Joe Kubert died this week at the age of 85. Perhaps best known as the DC comics legend responsible for such characters as Sgt. Rock, Hawkman, Enemy Ace, and Tor, Kubert was also the founder of The Kubert School, the only accredited trade school for comic book artists in the country. You can check out a video of Kubert talking about digital comics over here.

Your eyes do not deceive you, Rumpus readers — Margaret Atwood sat down for this week’s Sunday interview. She talks with Gina Frangello about her novel-in-excerpts, Positron, along with the art of responding to readers on Twitter. (You can also check out her piece for Year in Reading.)

Jonathan Franzen dishes about the forthcoming HBO adaptation of The Corrections.