Do you know Tolstoy’s “Three Hermits”? You should.

A Joshua Cohen double-shot– Reviewing Gilbert Sorrentino’s The Abyss of Human Illusion for Bookforum; and at Tablet:

Two subjects that even most conscientious readers know not enough about: concrete poetry and the German-language, postwar literary avant-garde. These subjects reach their dark syzygy in the work of Heimrad Bäcker, an Austrian poet, editor, and publisher of a certain generation whose transcript—the lowercase is not just correct but imperative—has recently been translated into English.

And now it’s Rumpus Double-up Interview Sex Time- for Recession Sex Workers #8, Stephen Elliott interviews Antonia Crane; and Steve Almond interviews his former student Jason Mulgrew.

This Santa Fe Institute economist claims that 1 in 4 Americans is employed guarding the wealth of the rich.

Joanna Scott on J.M. Coetzee at The Nation, because hey why not?

And now, in what I’m more or less convinced will be officially known as NYTea Time: Will Blythe likes Bolano’s Monsieur Pain; Joel Brouwer goes high-low on the new Tony Hoagland; Geoff Dyer is unimpressed by the new DeLillo (this seems to be the general trend of opinion, but I still want to see for myself; also, in the opening lines of the review, Dyer sketches his view of the best and worst DeLillo; to the extent that my two favorite DeLillo books (Mao II and Cosmopolis) are the ones he thinks are the worst, may be safe to say our tastes may diverge); Deborah Solomon talks to Douglas Coupland about Vancouver; and Francine du Plessix Gray on the new Amy Bloom collection, Where the God of Love Hangs Out. She likes it quite a bit–no surprise there. I’ve never heard a cross word said about Amy Bloom, who seems to be one of the highest-regarded contemporary writers I’ve never quite gotten around to reading. There’s a copy of her book Come to Me that I can see on my shelf from where I’m sitting. Tell me friends, is it high time?