Quick remainders (because I’m dabbling in this great new thing called “sleep” these days)

March 22, 2005

• As if the Valerie Plame affair weren’t bad enough, in what may be retaliation for his forthcoming book critical of the Bush administration’s post-9/11 military “strategies,” a journalist has been falsely accused in a forged but seemingly official Defense Intelligence Agency cable of spying for Saddam Hussein. (Via Moby Lives.)

• Ricky Gervais of The Office claims to have read only one novel in his life: The Catcher in the Rye. “He was 28 at the time. ‘It was great,’ he said, ‘but there’s only so much time in the day.'”

• Write Da Vinci Code, use book jacket in lieu of photo I.D. to board plane.

• Robert Louis Stevenson wrote his famous Dr. Jeckyl-Mr. Hyde story while under the influence of a hallucinogenic drug similar to LSD. (Via Bookninja.)

• Sales of Marilynne Robinson’s justly-vaunted Gilead have jumped in the wake of the Critics’ Circle award. (Also Critics’ Circle-related: CAAF of Tingle Alley points to David Orr’s insightful comments, delivered after receiving a special citation for criticism, about the place of the literary reviewer.)

• Last week The Chicago Tribune profiled the talented novelist Stephen Elliott, whose father sends him expletive-filled letters and claims Elliott’s charges of parental abuse are untrue.

• Camille Paglia is back. (Oh, that’s right. Unfortunately, she never went away.) She’s written a new book about 43 English-language poems. I might actually read it, on the strength of this review.