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On the Shelf

By

Bulletin

Gustave Flaubert. Photograph by Nadar.

A cultural news roundup.

  • Michel Houellebecq has been found.
  • So has a James M. Cain manuscript.
  • Neil Young is writing an autobiography.
  • So is Jermaine Jackson.
  • So is Julian Assange. But without his consent.
  • “If I say ‘David Bellos has to be one of the smartest people now on the planet,’ what language am I using? English of a kind; but scarcely the Queen’s, which—to judge from her public utterances—retains a careful insularity; mid-Atlantic schtick is not Her Majesty’s bag.”
  • Nor Shakespeare’s.
  • The Sondheim-crossword mother lode.
  • Shakeups at DC Comics …
  • But peace at the Poetry Society.
  • “The general editorial posture of the magazine leaned away from the conventions of the establishment and toward the eccentricities of bohemians everywhere.”
  • Salman Rushdie joins Twitter.
  • “Flaubert once bet some friends that he could make love to a woman, smoke a cigar, and write a letter at the same time. He won, as they looked on in admiration.”
  • These are beautiful, if we do say so ourselves.