Is anyone else sick of contests? I’m sick of contests. Why?

At Triple Canopy, a podcast conversation between Joseph McElroy and Joshua Cohen, discussing one another’s work.

Consider this a PS to this morning’s roundup: Emily Gould’s And the Heart Says Whatever, written by Eryn Loeb for The Rumpus. It’s not a review, exactly, and neither is it quite a personal essay (it’s also not quite not one) but it is both clear-eyed and well-intentioned, which is more than can be said for most of what’s been written about And the Heart (cf. Ana Marie Cox in Bookforum, which Loeb discusses at some length).

Words David Foster Wallace Circled in His Dictionary That Were Used in Infinite Jest (And Where They Appear)

What exactly does [Andrew Sullivan] think is going to happen now? Does he imagine that Kagan, in an uncharacteristically un-butch moment, is going to break down in front of Orrin Hatch and tearily confess to having cloistered away a secret lesbian lover in some Cambridge bat cave because she was worried that Alan Dershowitz would be really really mean to her about it? Because that would go over really well for gay rights–what a role model!–never mind Kagan’s confirmation.

Any day with something new by Richard Kim is a good day.

Last weekend I read Norwood by Charles Portis on a Peter Pan Bus from NYC to Northampton, Massachusetts. Tremendously funny and sharp, a pre-cursor to the Coen Brothers. And not just hee-haw, but vivid to the point of effortless grace: one man is described as “holding out his tongue like he was waiting for a coin.” Everyone in Norwood is breezy and distinct, even the people “driving the conflict,” which makes it kind of avant-garde, right? For one or two sentence characterization and all-around deft awesomeness, I’ve not read much better recently than Charles Portis. Why is this post a snippet? Because Ed Park already wrote an awesome essay about Portis. Now let’s all read everything Portis has written and gab about it.

In celebration of the paperback release of his latest novel Castle, the excellent J. Robert Lennon is giving away iPad and PDF versions of his Video Game Hints, Tricks, And Cheats: Essays, Exercises, Riffs, Gags, And Other Incidental Writings, “a collection of random, mostly comic writing from the past dozen years, including pieces published in Harper’s, Granta, The Los Angeles Times, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere.”

What’s the one story you keep writing over and over? I don’t mean revising. I mean the aesthetic or emotional or dream-fugue house that all of your stuff keeps trying to break into. What does it look like? What is its essence?

48 Hr Mag is live. I just contributed.

What scenes or lines in books genuinely offended you?