So far, The Guardian is the only publication to make a public mea culpa, while others have eliminated or amended their online obituaries without any reference to the original version — or in a few cases, still are citing Fitzgerald’s florid prose weeks after he pointed out its true origin.

• Roger Ebert remembers Gene Siskel, who died February 20, 1999:“We almost always thought the same things were funny. That may be the best sign of intellectual communion.”
• Facebook 25 things note win
• Lucero concert MP3s (Feb. 6, 2009) at nyctaper.
• Jonathan Baumbach at The New You Project: “It’s always hard to like books that you’re compelled to read. The worst thing for the soul is to pretend to like something because older and wiser heads tell you you should.”
• “Techcrunch are full of shit”
• A new poem in the New Yorker by Leonard Cohen: A Street

I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it.

…

Take a moment to think about this. Each of us possesses a tangible, living soul. The System has no such thing. We must not allow The System to exploit us. We must not allow The System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: We made The System.

Of course, the entire speech is worth reading.

{via}

RT @jaycolle: Audio file of Flannery O’Connor reading A Good Man is Hard to Find. Download this gem here: http://tinyurl.com/cdyxhp

Some quick googling found a likely source, that had some more notes. Apparently this reading was recorded off a radio broadcast from Notre Dame not too long before O’Connor died. It’s nice to get a reading of A Good Man… but to me the real find is her talk “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Literature”. The links to both are in WMA, so I converted them to MP3 for all y’all Mac/Linux peeps. Highly recommended.

• Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Literature
• A Good Man is Hard to Find

(WMA links here)
ND Archive Search here.

Reading through the appendix, as it turns out the book was originally published by Harper, in conjunction with the Book of the Month Club. (It would eventually be the first Book of the Month Club selection by an African American author.) It seems as if Harper was amenable to publishing the book consistent with Wright’s artistic vision, but the club (presumably fearing its members’ sensitive natures or even government censors) took exception to several passages, most notably a sex-tinged scene in a movie theater balcony towards the beginning of the story. Wright acquiesed, probably grudgingly, to the club’s wishes, and completely rewrote the theater scene.

(From PeteLit)

• 200th birthday props for EA Poe at Amoeba blog
• Also at Amoeba, a look at the Mats’ Let It Be and questions (some of) its timelessness.
• At LitKicks, Levi posted another selection from his upcoming memoir. It took me back (16 years – gasp!) to fond memories of Charles Isbell’s Homeboy From Hell, still one of my all-time favorite internet music sites, especially the New Jack reviews.
• I recently received my copy of You, as part of Lauren Cerand’s The New You Project. As per usual, I’m already behind the starting line, watching as others are off and running. To wit: Largehearted Boys’ book notes entry from Jonathan Baumbach. More to come once I’ve read the book.

INTERVIEWER
You’ve also written that Americans tend to avoid contemplating larger issues. What is it that we’re afraid of?

ROBINSON
People are frightened of themselves. It’s like Freud saying that the best thing is to have no sensation at all, as if we’re supposed to live painlessly and unconsciously in the world. I have a much different view. The ancients are right: the dear old human experience is a singular, difficult, shadowed, brilliant experience that does not resolve into being comfortable in the world. The valley of the shadow is part of that, and you are depriving yourself if you do not experience what humankind has experienced, including doubt and sorrow. We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of this, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege.