David Foster Wallace

No one cares more

2013-05-07 08:38:00

When I got my reviewer's copy of Bill Walsh's new book, Yes I Could Care Less: How to Be a Language Snob Without Being a Jerk (St. Martin's Griffin, 256 pages, $14.99), the book fell open to this passage: "You're free to talk back to your usage guides....

Defending Bryan Garner

2012-05-27 10:25:00

Weary as you must be by now of the hopefully hullabaloo, a post at Language Log by Mark Liberman, "The H-word,"� gives rise to some further observations. Professor Liberman demonstrates a salient fact about the disparagement of hopefully� as a sentence...

Pulitzer Prizes : No fiction winner

2012-04-16 13:42:00

The 2012 Pulitzer Prizes award today had a big gap -- there was no winner in the fiction category, which must have ticked off a whole lot of marketing execs. What will they do with all the "Winner of the Pulitzer Prize" stickers they had printed up for...

No fiction Pulitzer: The problem wasn't the books

2012-04-23 08:15:09

For the first time since 1977, the Pulitzer Prize Board has not chosen a winner in the fiction category. Susan Larson, one of three fiction jurors who each read 300 submissions prior to forwarding three finalists, announced that the jurors were "shocked,"...

Baltimore actress Julia Pickens reveals the woman behind the roles in 'Like/Dislike'

2011-08-09 15:51:00

She’s played in indie horror films, in plenty of tough girl roles, and with multiple theater groups, and she recently “signed a contract in blood” (her words!) with the Baltimore Rock Opera Society. Julia Pickens, 27, has been acting...

Man charged with killing cat, abusing another

2011-08-03 15:58:58

Ethan Phillip Weibman went to the Maryland SPCA, and from the dozens of cats, police say, he chose a short-haired one named Lucy to adopt. He returned to the shelter two days later with the cat — dead, according to authorities. And, they said, he...

Short story writer Lydia Davis wins Man Booker Intl fiction prize

2013-05-22 13:36:04

By Paul Casciato LONDON, May 22 (Reuters) - American short story writer Lydia Davis won the fifth Man Booker International Prize for fiction on Wednesday for a body of work that includes some of the briefest tales ever published. Davis - who has only...

Short story writer Lydia Davis wins major fiction prize

2013-05-22 14:37:01

LONDON (Reuters) - American short story writer Lydia Davis won the fifth Man Booker International Prize for fiction on Wednesday for a body of work that includes some of the briefest tales ever published. Davis, a professor of creative writing at the...

Poor IRS; it didn't mean to target tea parties

2013-05-15 15:05:00

Well, this would explain my $25,000 tax bill. Looks like I picked the wrong year to start up a right-wing militia group. I called it “Tim’s Teas,” and well, who knew? I swear, we were simply a “social welfare”...

It's rich that the IRS wants us to believe it never targets anyone

2013-05-14 14:21:00

'Distant Intimacy,' Gaddis letters open up very different literary lives

2013-05-12 09:04:02

If one is to believe Joseph Epstein's introduction to "Distant Intimacy" -- one of the most wickedly entertaining books anyone is likely to concoct all year -- he and his 335-page email correspondent Frederic Raphael still haven't met. Nor have they...

A book for Mother's Day? The mystery of my mother's reading habits

2013-05-10 12:22:00

No two readers are alike. No two mothers are alike. And the only way to really find out what might be a good book to get your mother for Mother’s Day is to ask her what she likes to read. My own mother’s reading habits have always been a bit...

The 2012 Pulitzer Prize in fiction was awarded to no one. The finalists were announced to the public: "Train Dreams" by Denis Johnson, "Swamplandia!" by Karen Russell and "The Pale King" by David Foster Wallace.

2013-04-12 11:15:11

by D.T. Max (Viking: 356 pp., $27.95) The first biography of the novelist, who committed suicide in 2008 at the age of 46, Max's book is neither hagiography nor reassessment but something much more subtle and difficult: a consideration of the artist as a human being.

2012-12-13 13:04:19

"When he smoked marijuana he tended to masturbate a great deal, whether or not there were opportunities for intercourse, and the petroleum jelly kept him from returning to normal function all tender and sore." (pg. 21)

2012-02-03 13:15:52