Links Roundup, September 2012 Edition

This week I come to you with links from the Internets. Most of these are recent, pulled-from-the-literary-headlines kind of stuff, but a few are older gems I’ve stumbled across that were just too damn wonderful or hilarious not to include.

Also, I’m inclined to use this post to shamelessly plug the OSU Press/The Journal Award in Poetry, the winner of which will be published and receive the $3000 ($3,000!!!) Charles B. Wheeler Prize. Entries must be postmarked by September 30th. Shameless plugging = accomplished.

Granta, which has just launched a Chinese-language edition of is magazine, apparently plans on adding more foreign editions to its catalogue in the future. Perhaps there will be employment opportunities for writers who speak more than one language. Très bien, non?

Phillip Roth recently got in a little tiff with the people of Wikipedia, who refused to allow him to edit the entry on his novel, The Human Stain. Apparently, the entry listed former The New York Times book critic Anatole Broyard as the inspiration for the novel’s protagonist Coleman Silk, but Mr. Roth cried “¡No es verdad!”

Salman Rushdie has been doing interviews to promote his new book, Joseph Anton, a memoir of his time in hiding during the fatwa against him. I caught his appearances on The Daily Show and Charlie Rose. I have a lot of respect for Rushdie as an artist, and was very glad to hear his comments on the recent, tragic events in the Libya. Check it out.

This video is from ten years ago, but it’s probably the greatest thing in the history of the world, ever. In it Gord Downie of the Tragically Hip acts out/reads “At The Quinte Hotel,” a poem by Canadian poet Al Purdy. “Your beer is half fart and half horse piss,” has got to be in the running for best line of the last decade.

Finally, I’m not here to hype OSU’s MFA Program (and not that the program needs it), but some of our alums have been getting themselves in the news recently. So here’s a review of Claire Watkins’ Battleborn in last Sunday’s The New York Times Book Review, and here’s Michael Kardos on The Huffington Post brilliantly discussing the differences between literary and genre fiction.

Good stuff. As always, thanks for reading. See you back here in a week or so.

Michael Larson was born and raised on a horse farm in the small town of Rainier, Washington. He earned his B.A. from Dartmouth College, before moving to Mutsu, Japan, where he lived and worked as a middle-school English teacher for two years. He is currently in the Creative Writing MFA Program at The Ohio State University, and serves as online editor for The Journal.