Just the way Faulkner wanted

A new edition of "The Sound and the Fury" will now be published just as William Faulkner desired: with different colors of type. For $345 get your copy today....

http://www.foliosociety.com/book/SAF

The rise of the paperback

Interesting post in The Atlantic about the history of the paperback book - albeit, according to a book written in 1984 - and about how the rise in popularity and numbers of published paperbacks "...made an enormous contribution to our social, cultural, educational, and literary life."

Also, according to this piece (and the book, really), there were only 500 legitimate bookstores in the US in 1931. And while I've been bemoaning the dearth of bookstores in Indianapolis, my complaints seem so fickle with that figure in mind.

Check it out: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/06/a-golden-age-of-books-there-were-only-500-real-bookstores-in-1931/258309/

Barthelme's Syllabus

I've been scouring around for most of these, considering I've only read a small portion of them. Pretty awesome stuff on here.

Any of you out there read any of these books?

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200310/?read=barthelme_syllabus

Anthony Burgess comments on Being an Novelist

I am by trade a novelist. It is, I think, a harmless trade, though it is not everywhere considered a respectable one. Novelists put dirty language into the mouths of their characters, and they show these characters fornicating or going to the toilet. Moreover, it is not a useful trade, as is that of the carpenter or the pastry cook. The novelist passes the time for you between one useful action and another, he helps fill the gaps that appear in the serious fabric of living. He is a mere entertainer, a sort of clown. He mimes, he makes grotesque gestures, he is pathetic or comic and sometimes both, he sends words spinning through the air like colored balls.

- Anthony Burgess, The Clockwork Condition, The New Yorker, June 4, 2012

1Q84 Design Video

Interesting stuff.

Last one about Bolano. I swear....

We all know, or we all should know, that Roberto Bolano was one of the original founders of the Infrarealists Poetry movement. Here is the group's manifesto, translated in to English for the first time. It reads like a beautiful, long prose-poem and was penned by R.B. himself.

http://altarpiece.blogspot.com/2009/06/first-infrarealist-manifesto-english.html

Also, check out this old picture:

Reading Challenge

It's a little late now, but I just found out about this reading challenge. I would suggest Bifurcaria bifurcata (the original poster of this challenge) extend this opportunity to next year, thereby attracting more new readers of Bolano. Just click on the picture below to check out the challenge.