paper trail

Jan 7, 2011 @ 9:00:00 am

Michael Chabon

MobyLives excerpts a letter in which New York Magazine editor Adam Moss dwells on the importance of finding “wonderful new voices who will keep the magazine fresh and moving forward.” Which prompts MobyLives to ask a good question: “Who are the most exciting young critics currently writing?

Your new book is coming out soon: Design a cool book cover, self-publish, and print-on-demand. Easy! Now you just need to figure out a way to sell them.

Obama is to be the subject of a new work of fiction titled O: A Presidential Novel, due in stores on January 25. Though the author is Anonymous, various reports state that the author is “someone with ‘vast personal experience’ about what President Obama needs to do to win re-election.” Everyone, of course, is comparing the new book to Primary Colors, the novel based on Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, which was also attributed to Anonymous. That book’s author, political reporter Joe Klein, was unmasked in 1996 by Vassar College Shakespeare professor Donald Foster, who had developed a computer program that could accurately identify the author of a text. One wonders how long it will take for Foster or some other textual specialist to reveal the O author’s identity.

The new issue of McSweeney’s, which includes a “fragment of Michael Chabon’s lost novel,” comes in a box with a head drawn on it.