“For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.” Schopenhauer

I’ve written a short piece for Paper Cuts: “Literary Mourning–Thoughts on Barry Hannah.”

Editors: When you’re nominating writing from your magazine for an award or prize, do you always nominate the work you think is the absolute best you’ve published, or do you nominate work that is maybe just among the best but that you feel might match the aesthetics and prior history of the prize or award you’re nominating for? In other words, as an editor, do you target your nominations for the Pushcart Prize and other awards/anthologies in the same way you hope that writers target their submissions to you?

Paper Cuts has a Living With Music playlist by graphic journalist Joe Sacco, on the occasion of his new book Footnotes in Gaza.

And I’ve got a short double-review of two books about New York: Normal People Don’t Live Like This by Dylan Landis, and Ten Walks/Two Talks by Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch, over at Time Out New York.

Patience is everything. The bitch of it. The want.

New Action Yes is live, with a shitload of the good, including Juliet Cook, Peter Davis, Christopher DeWeese, Justin Dobbs, Claire Donato, Daniel Borzutzky, and a slew of speech. Eat it.

Macy Halford at The New Yorker Book Bench blog rips off (oh, okay, perhaps we’re talking parallel development here, as they say in the movie business) HTMLGIANT’s Haut or Not feature in a new thing called The Subconscious Bookshelf.  In fairness, the Book Bench feature seems more oriented toward analysis, while HTMLGIANT was just plain old judging you.  Anyway, I think HTMLGIANT readers (and contributors) should submit to The Subconscious Bookshelf…could be very interesting.  What are you waiting for?

The David Foster Wallace Audio Project [via Condalmo]

Randall Brown offers some really concise and spot-on advice from Steve Almond about flash fiction and withholding information from readers. (Steve Almond day.)

Do you feel that literary fiction is afraid to make people laugh these days?