LINKS

* This is what The Sound and the Fury looks like on stage. Read more about the adaption, which doesn't cut a single line from the novel.

* The long odyssey of Christopher Hitchens

* Iceland will be the guest of honor at Frankfurt . . . in 2011. They really plan these things in advance.

* The Columbia University Press blog on Korean poet Kim Sowôl

* We're goin to Mars, Argentina!

* And speaking of all the strange things for the U.S. to bring out to Argentina, I've just discovered that Tom Wolfe will be appearing at the MALBA in Buenos Aires. That's great.

* The Complete Review reviews With Borges, which I discussed a few weeks ago

* The New Yorker posits that teaching English in China is a matter of framing it as a path to self-fulfillment and a way to beat the imperialist aggressors

* Garth has a pretty good take on Ursula K. Le Guin's recent, odd essay on the state of reading in the U.S.:

Is there a crisis in reading? Impossible to say, when "our own people," the arbiters of literary culture, decline one of its most valuable functions: self-criticism. To be fair to the editors quoted above, their enthusiasm on behalf of their respective projects is evidence of a laudable commitment to the culture of the book; as Lorin Stein puts it, "This is a business I believe in passionately." And if we are to blame someone for changing the subject from the state of reading to the state of publishing, it should be Le Guin herself.

* Those with an interest in Michel Houellebecq's mother issues will enjoy this article

* Looks like PBR isn't quite as working class as it likes to think:

         Since the early 1970s, sales of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer had plummeted steadily. Then, in 2002, the beer became the beverage of choice in hipster haunts everywhere. Sales rose 5.4% that year, followed by a 9.4% increase in supermarket sales in the first quarter of 2003. Marketwatchers initially scratched their heads at this sudden and inexplicable uptick. The beer hadn't been actively advertised in years, but that's precisely what worked in its favor. With ads from the competition (typical T&A showcases, burping frogs, and the ubiquitous catchphrase "Wassup?") as foils, PBR was automatically imbued with an anti-corporate aura that couldn't be bought.

Except that it was.

As it turns out, a savvy marketer had decided to forgo mainstream advertising, instead targeting his pitch at those bastions of corporate culture, bike messengers. And that's just one of the many tales of corporate marketing firms plundering the underground Anne Elizabeth Moore tells in Unmarketable. . . .

* Critical Mass gives you a write-up of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

* Wood v. Franzen

* And lastly, please don't say it: Getter better