The wit of JM Coetzee

Though Whitman gives the impression that he witnessed the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theater and provides a dramatic description of the event, he was not in fact there. But he did believe he enjoyed a special relationship with Lincoln. Both men were tall. 

- JM Coetzee, in the NYRB

'If transgender fisting occurs earlier in the history of the novel...

I would be surprised.'

And other musings upon Ulysses, by Adam Thirwell.

Parks vs Dyer (vs the academy)

Borderline personal (and misleading) piece on criticism and its discontents, by Tim Parks. Couple of viable comments from the voice-of-the-dog, though, of which my favourites are:

If every one in America with a Ph.D. in physics suddenly died, what would happen to physics in this country? Now consider what would happen to literature in this country if everyone with a Ph.D. in literature died?

and

Accepted into a Ph.D. program in literature many years, I decided to find a life outside the academy, thinking then, as I do now, I had no wish to write more and more about less and less for fewer and fewer.

and (brilliantly)

I was unable to comprehend at least half of the writing in the recent inaugural issue of the journal "Translation"

When, oh when

will editors (for it is surely they*) learn to resist the temptation to caption every article about Geoff Dyer with this obvious, time-battered title?

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* This is what I'm talking about.

Curious piece about Naipaul by Bolaño that probably wouldn't have made it anywhere unless Bolaño were not only famous but dead

Here.

Also true

The more bad books you finish, the fewer good ones you’ll have time to start.

- Tim Parks, NYRB

Bad Murakami!

The Little People came suddenly. I don’t know who they are. I don’t know what it means. I was a prisoner of the story. I had no choice. They came, and I described it. That is my work.

- Haruki Murakami, in the New York Times Magazine (in the New York Review of Books)

Was Hammurabi a Commie?

... and other questions that enthuse the New York Review of Books.

[Clue: No.]

The truth about notebooks

by Charles Simic, of the New York Review (of Books) blog.

Except for the bit about Moleskines. Still with that shit? You know you can buy a book with words in for less than a Moleskine?!

Grumpy old men have words

On the Moral Brink

Coetzee on Roth,* in the NYRB.

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* but not Brink