Exuberant Riffs on a Land Run Amok: David Foster Wallace used his prodigious gifts as a writer — his manic, exuberant prose, his ferocious powers of observation, his ability to fuse avant-garde techniques with old-fashioned moral seriousness — to create a series of strobe-lit portraits of a millennial America overdosing on the drugs of entertainment and self-gratification, and to capture, in the words of the musician Robert Plant, the myriad “deep and meaningless” facets of contemporary life. [NYT]
Reprints are king in parts of book world: People whose lives are tied up with books, as writers, critics, booksellers or readers, are always — always — looking for something new. But in the last few years, they’ve been turning to something old. The publishers specializing in reprints have become increasingly important to the people who haunt bookstores searching for the next great read. [Los Angeles Times]
Poetry’s popularity soars online: Poetry, long thought of as an art form in terminal decline, is taking off on the internet according to new figures. [Telegraph]
Target Now Selling Sony Reader: Sony’s Reader Digital Book is now available in Target stores nationwide. [Publishers Weekly]
Annie Proulx bemoans torrent of ‘pornish’ Brokeback fan fiction: The Pulitzer prize-winner calls the film adaptation of Brokeback Mountain “a source of constant irritation” as she’s bombarded with pornographic fan literature. [Guardian]
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