LINKS

Thought I don't subscribe to the sentiments implied by this essay's first line ("More than most writers, the circumstances of Malcolm Lowry's death are peculiarly relevant to a consideration of his work, since excess of every kind was both his method and his subject.") after John Hartley Williams gets done talking about Lowry's death, he does a good job of talking about his books.

Harold Bloom reads Barack Obama's poetry.

Richard Nash makes a few discoveries and gives you a Matthew Sharpe podcast.

Caitlan Flanagan discusses Generation MySpace.

Dan Green tells publishers to stop trying to grow their business. I agree completely--we'd all be a lot better off if major publishers weren't on 24/7 lookout for the next blockbuster. That said, as pieces of large media empires, major publishers can't exactly ignore their profitability unless there's a major change in thinking. Unlikely.

Another book that I hope crashes. And via the same blog, a fine idea for a new sitcom.

Max runs down some books upcoming in the remainder of 2007. We'll be having a lengthy review of at least one of these in the fall Quarterly Conversation.

Is V.S. Naipaul talking about the death of the novel again? For a while now I've tend to screen out almost all death-of-novel-talk, but that coffin received its final nail recently when I read Matthew Arnold writing in 1880 about people who preached the imminent end of literary art.

The hit of the "editor's buzz'" panel at BEA.