A Feast of Links

People have already rocked today's trivia clue. I'll reveal the answer tomorrow, but in the meantime, I've got a few links to pass along.

• The new issue of Avery Anthology will be at Vroman's soon. It features stories by Hannah Tinti, Kevin Canty, Edan Lepucki and others. I recommend you pick it up. It will be in the literary anthology area, over by hardcover fiction. You will know it by its trail of awesomeness.

• The LA Times has a clip of John Krasinski's adaptation of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. It's always good to see Josh Charles getting work. (via Jacket Copy)
  

• From BoingBoing, a Scrabble keyboard.

• Is The Washington Post eliminating Book World, its weekly book section?

• Molly Young on Playboy at n+1. (Safe for work, by the way.)

  The first thing that strike the casual reader is the anatomical variety among bunnies. Nipples, for one thing. Some are as big as cupcakes, others are the size of a penny. They are occasionally erect and come in a range of colors as varied as drugstore lipsticks. Pubic hair is another delight to behold, appearing first in 1971 and thriving until 1997.

Back in Beige

I'm back from my three-day soujourn to the Governor's Conference on Women, where I helped host author signings with the likes of Rachel Ray, Rocco DiSpirito, Jenny McCarthy, and Madeleine Albright. I'm very, very tired, so you'll forgive me if this post is brief. A few things to check out while I soak in a hot tub:

• Narrative Magazine has a new short story by Stuart Dybek available online (You have to sign up to read it, but it is free).

• The Times' Paper Cut blog has a playlist by Todd Hasak-Lowy, who will be appearing at Vroman's on November 11 to discuss and sign his new book Captives.

• Everybody in the world has already linked to this, so I should too: Rolling Stone has a lengthy profile of the last days of David Foster Wallace.

• A few of us here at Vroman's are huge Mad Men fans (It's clearly Originality Day here at the bookstore), and awhile back we were talking about putting together a Mad Men display of books that seemed in a similar vein to the show. The first book that popped into my head was The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, but the second was Revolutionary Road. Turns out I was right (via The Morning News).
  

John Krasinski Reads David Foster Wallace

When John Krasinski got his check for doing the pilot of the American version of The Office, he didn't buy a car or an expensive rug or a share in a championship racehorse (although he was probably tempted), he optioned the David Foster Wallace book Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, which he's adapted for the screen, directed, and produced. Back in 2006, he made an appearance at Jest Fest, an evening of readings of Wallace's work. Here is the YouTube footage of Krasinski reading from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (Warning: The content is for mature audiences only, and is probably NSFW, depending on where you W):



I've never read Wallace's work. It's something I had planned to rectifiy this fall with an Infinite Jest reading group, but now, support seems to be waning. There's something sad about picking up Wallace's opus now, when before it seemed merely daunting. His death hasn't hurt his sales, so maybe I'm the only one who feels this way. Anyway, what's interesting to me about the Krasinski footage is how he makes the passage come alive. The knock against DFW's writing has always been its difficulty, and yet here's a passage that has the audience in stitches. It's easy to follow, it's funny, hell, it's brilliant.