When We Were Young

A collection of striking photos of numerous well-known contemporary writers, in two galleries. Somehow these pictures exude the literary.Blogger lonelysandwich makes the only half toungue-in-cheek observation that the original cover of tennis fan David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest shares a color scheme with those Andre Agassi Nikes that were all the rage in the early '90s.George Saunders appeared on Letterman last week, as you may have heard. onegoodmove put the clip online.

"I didn’t know who William Kelley was when I found that book but, like millions of Americans, I knew a term he is credited with first committing to print. 'If You’re Woke, You Dig It' read the headline of a 1962 Op-Ed that Kelley published in the New York Times, in which he pointed out that much of what passed for “beatnik” slang (“dig,” “chick,” “cool”) originated with African-Americans." Are you familiar with William Kelley? Let Kathryn Schulz be your guide on this historical literary adventure as she discovers an immensely influential writer whom most of us have never heard mentioned.

Need some more poetry in your life? Catch up on the year’s best collections. At Page-Turner, Dan Chiasson chooses nine books he predicts will be read in a hundred years, including Corridor by Saskia Hamilton and Go Giants by Nick Laird. FYI, I wrote a Curiosity about one of Chiasson’s picks.