• U.T. at Austin’s online Beckett extravaganza will go live on April 13. “The centennial Web exhibition is derived substantially from information and materials in the Center’s renowned Beckett collection,” which is composed primarily of “holograph and typescript works,” “supplemented by Beckett’s correspondence and a wide range of his writing.” (Bonus Austin link: Scott McLemee’s recollections of the Slacker era.)

• Number One Hit Song heralds Magnus Mills’ Explorers of the New Century: “Imagine an amalgam between Breugel’s Parable of the Blind Leading the Blind and Monty Python’s Flying Circus.”

• The Reader of Absurdist Books asks Kevin Brockmeier why, during a recent reading from The Brief History of the Dead, he “looked up after a sentence, said ‘White space,’ and returned to the text.”

• The Tournament of Books includes a surprise zombie round.

• TMFTML responds to the Elizabeth Bishop controversy by publishing “Ballad Of The Love-Scorned Anywoman,” some newly unearthed juvenilia by Elizabeth Skurnick. Read for the climax.

• Dana reports: “Someone just found my site via this search. The originating IP? Dade County Public Schools System.” As a product of that very system’s high schools, I can’t say I’m surprised.

• Lisa Jardine and Annie Watkins have been asking men and women how their favorite books affect their lives. Some broad generalizations have resulted. “[M]en use fiction almost physically as a guide to negotiate a difficult journey…. They use fiction almost topographically, as a map. Many of our women respondents last year explained that they used novels metaphorically.”