Pardon the sort of self-promotion but PANK is contributing all proceeds from all sales (between now and 2/13/10) of our chapbook, How to Take Yourself Apart by Aaron Burch, and PANK 4 to the Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières. If you want to acquire some great reading material and make a generous contribution to organizations who will put your money to good use in Haiti, consider participating. Order here. Both ship next week.

Small Press Distribution 2009 best seller fiction list released. Why not use this as a reading list for 2010?

If you’re in New York: The Rubin Museum on 17th st. screens David Lynch’s Blue Velvet tomorrow night, Friday 1/15, at 9:30 to accompany their awesome, ending-soon exhibit of The Red Book by Jung.  Info here.  I’ll be briefly introducing the film. There’s a Q & A about it @ The L Magazine here.

Terrific new Sixth Finch. Alabaster, abandoned Cadillacs, a big fat flying snooze, white as a long sleep, a horse snow-starred with blood, and that’s just the first few. Plus great visual art. Check it out!

As regular readers of this blog know, over the past year or so I’ve been reading a lot of Harold Bloom. I’ve blogged my favorite quotes from his books as I’ve come across them, read several books on the strength of his recommendation (Bleak House, Kafka’s Blue Octavo Notebooks, Tolstoy’s Hadji Murad). But I don’t think I’ve said much about his body of work as a body of work, or articulated what it is about him that compels my sustained interest. And I’m still not going to do that–at least not today; first, because I’m not yet prepared to articulate that thought or those thoughts (blogs happen basically in real time, and my own work here is a present-tense record of my own ongoing education and expanding horizons, rather than any kind of attempted statement of intractable positions or beliefs); and second, even if I was prepared to attempt such an undertaking, I’ve got other things to do this afternoon. But, since the Viceland interview I linked to the other day seems to have been received well, I thought I would share another bit of Webvailable Bloomiana: this New York Times Review of Bloom’s Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?. The review is from October 2004, and is written by the great Melville scholar Andrew Delbanco. It offers a concise and articulate an introduction to Bloom’s virtues and talents–as well as a clear-eyed but vitriol-free acknowledgment of his limitations. I don’t know–or care, quite frankly–whether it will sell you on Bloom, but I think it will help make clear why I have become such a regular customer.

Just a friendly reminder to backup your stuff; the computer is okay now, but it was frozen and making the weirdest clicking sounds just a few minutes ago.

Today at Vice, The Tyrant, Ken, and myself present a list of literary no-nos, THE NY TYRANT GUIDE TO NOT BEING A HORRIBLE WRITER IN THE YEAR 2010.

Fiction Writers Review does a Michael Czyzniejewski feature. We get an interview, all kinds of links you should touch with the tip of your tongue. (You move your mouse with your tongue, right? I mean you are at this site…) We get love for Michael. It is deserved.

“An Australian study found that every hour per day spent sitting in front of a TV or monitor raises your risk of early death from heart disease by 18%, even if you exercise and aren’t overweight.”    What??? (via Jezebel)

Mississippi Review flash fiction issue, guest edited by Kim Chinquee, includes some wonderful writers.