If only you’d written a better poem, the oil spill would have never happened.

1. At The Rumpus, Stephen Elliott questions the authtor copy policies of publishers, rightly insisting that the author is his own best promotion machine and should therefore have books to back it up.
2. At Abe Books, 25 iconic book covers. Any they missed? [via Moby Lives]
3. At DC’s, 80 chandeliers.
4. At n+1, Paul Maliszewski remembers David Markson.

Jonathan Franzen on David Foster Wallace:

Somebody could write a whole monograph on how deliberately and artfully he deploys the modifier ‘sort of.’

"Redundant Clock" by Ji Lee

Keep thinking about this gag joke, and it becomes something more — some new numeric system; an existential 12 hour carousel; a sign that can only point to itself at the right moment, if moments were full minutes; the wrongness of its arms betwixt the hours, as if struggling for their own signs; the zen koan of it always being now o’clock.

1. Apple’s dabbling in the censorship business, specifically Ulysses.
2. Kimberly King Parsons gives Eugene Marten’s Firework five stars at Time Out New York.
3. Simmons interviews Tom Bissell at Fanzine
4. I rewatched Dead Ringers for the first time in about 10 years last night. Man, that movie is fucked up.