Recommended Reading: Clare Beams writes for Ploughshares about the effect of reading a story in which someone reads a story.
Reading about Reading
Characterizing Sleep
On this date 109 years ago, a cartoonist first paired the letter "Z" to the act of sleeping, beating out other attempts to write out the sound of slumber such as the tenacious "g-r-r-k-k-k-k" and the elegant "z-z-z-c-r-r-k-k-k-k."
William Blake(s)
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Appearing Elsewhere
My review of Tom Bissell's Magic Hours appears in this Sunday's NYTBR.
Lit-Mag Editors Stop Being Polite, Start Getting Real
A couple dozen leading literary magazine editors recently found themselves debating "submission fees" in a long, heated, and candid listserv discussion. The complete transcript - names have been changed to protect the innocent - is alternately depressing and heartening. It's a must-read for anyone who publishes in little magazines, or plans to, or is just curious about how editors see themselves. (Update (11/12): Apparently, the literary magazine that published this content on its website had not been authorized to do so by the Council of Literary Magazines and Small Presses, which administers the listserv. The content has since been taken down; we've de-activated the link to reflect that.)
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Chronic City, Come Alive
In an interview with Jonathan Lethem, the NBCC's Jane Ciabaratti offers, inter alia, a sympathetic reading of Chronic City; both have more affection than Kakutani did for what Lethem calls "the claptrap contraption plot I invented." Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal, in a flash of inspiration, assigns the book to the estimable Alexander Theroux - the only non-Latin writer who can credibly use the word "prosopographical" in a review. (But, attn editor: "not a jot" twice? in subsequent paragraphs?) A marathon bi-borough reading of the entire novel continues tonight at McNally Jackson.