• “Auden said something disparaging about Samuel Beckett getting the Nobel Prize for Literature. Nikos said: ‘Who else is there?’ Auden shook his head so all the sagging wrinkles shook and said: ‘There’s me.’” The gossipy diaries of David Plante.
• Speaking of Beckett, “Fail better,” a quotation from his Worstward Ho, continues to be wildly misappropriated by Silicon Valley execs who refuse to pay obeisance to its pessimism.
• In the UK, a children’s book about a foulmouthed boy with Tourette’s syndrome prompts a debate: Should salty books for young readers come with a warning?
• Now in print: “Footlights,” a novella by Charlie Chaplin that inspired the screenplay for Limelight. “‘Footlights’ is 70 pages long and contains around 34,000 words,” notes the BBC. Gosh, tell me more!
• The New York Times’ facile editorial page is under fire from its own staff: “Largely irrelevant.” “A waste of money.” “An embarrassment.”
• Facebook, Gmail, and Twitter are classically conditioning us. Notifications are a “never-ending arms race of cheap con games to compete for user attention.”