Was Proust "mentally defective"? (Evelyn Waugh thought so). Baudelaire called Voltaire "the king of nincompoops," and Nabokov once wrote of Hemingway: "I read him for the first time in the early 'forties, something about bells, balls and bulls, and loathed it." Compared to this compilation of writer-on-writer cracks, the press drubbing that Yann Martel has lately been enduring seems tame.

The long-vanquished Brits have a bit of fun at our first president's expense: "Founder of a nation, trouncer of the English, God-fearing family man: all in all, George Washington has enjoyed a pretty decent

This weekend, delve into UbuWeb's recent addition to the William Burroughs sound archives, 1965's "Call me Burroughs," as well as the audio collection of his buddy Brion Gysin's work. Just be sure you have some time on your hands; this stuff is about as addictive as the smack Burroughs preferred.

Don't make me come back there: When the New York Times's star columnists squabble, Clark Hoyt settles the score.

Former FSG editor Lorin Stein takes the helm at the Paris Review's Spring Revel, and chats about his new gig.

The Guardian has given the story an oddly Onion-esque headline, but don't let that stop you from reading about Eleanor Ross Taylor, and exploring her moving poetry.

We'd love to curl up with Earth is a Blue Pearl, and the other classics created by author Douglas Coupland for his new project: to explain 2010 to someone in 1935, by inventing a classic Penguin book

Timothy McSweeney has been invited to the Salon.

Why is good erotic writing so hard to pull off? It's icky, funny, or at best, boring. The Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction Award always gets a lot of play (see this year's winner), but Canadian novelist Russel Smith thinks it's "a mean-spirited exercise in playground mockery and repression." And speaking of bad sex: Granta, we need to talk about this cover.

@bard @bieber #tragedy: “Romeo and Juliet” is being tweeted; meanwhile, the Library of Congress has announced it's preserving all public tweets forever.

I like f'ing (filing, that is): New York University's Fales Library has started

The Atlantic's fiction issue is out now, among the many must-reads is a conversation with Paul Theroux on "Fiction in the Age of E-books."

What Cheever was to commuter country, Deborah Eisenberg is to Manhattan malaise. Her underrated short stories are a veritable taxonomy of urban dysfunction. Tonight, she reads from her new volume, Collected Stories, at Chelsea's 192 Books. Cult-celebrity spotters should scan the audience for her longtime partner, Wallace Shawn, who lately has been stealing scenes in contemporary drama's most gripping panorama of unhappy uptowners, Gossip Girl.

It is National

The giddy highs and woeful lows of a quarter-century of punk publishing, as seen by Jennifer Joseph of Manic D Press.

How do you like your canon served, and how do you pick up the check? That's the central question behind Open Letter publisher Chad Post's peeved reaction to Newsweek writer Malcolm Jones's critique of the Library of America. Jones asks if the LOA has "jumped the shark," because they devote volumes to the likes of Philip K. Dick and (special Newsweek shudder of disapproval) Shirley Jackson. Does Jones think that those handsome volumes of Melville and Wharton arrive from

At The Rumpus, Steve Almond recaps this weekend's AWP conference in "Things To Do in Denver When You're Braindead," and sensibly suggests that we worship George Saunders for his dignified bearing, flirt, and "lament."

In a world full of bias, bunk, and super-sized opinion, these anonymous scribes find the facts, and save face, for the world's most trusted publications.

Uh-Oprah: The notorious Kitty Kelley has penned an unauthorized biography of Winfrey, book publishing's most sought after sales-booster, who might host a book club show on her new network.

A report from this weekend’s AWP conference, on indie publishers' electronic-book plans: Graywolf Press will have them this fall, Coffee House Press is also taking the plunge, while Melville House reports that its first Kindle title, Every Man

This weekend, book lovers should flock to downtown Brooklyn's 177 Livingston, where Triple Canopy is hosting West Coast indie publisher Publication Studio. They'll be making books by day (10-4, Saturday), and hosting a discussion and party tonight and Saturday night. Art, live music, industry speculation, and cheap drinks are secondary seductions to lure you to the real prize, the Studio's extraordinary books.

“Are You Absolutely, Positively, and Wholeheartedly Ready to Publish Your Novel?” You can find out here.

On April 30, the PEN World Voices Festival is hosting a panel discussion called "A New World of Yesterday: Stefan Zweig’s Utopian Nostalgia." It will feature Zweig enthusiasts Klemens Renoldner, the director of the Stefan Zweig Centre at the University of Salzburg, and George Prochnik, who has written about Freud's trip to America and the importance of silence (he is now writing a book about Zweig).  Here's the kicker: the panel will also feature Michael Hofmann, whose resume includes

Motoko Rich is leaving her post as the New York Times's publishing-beat reporter. In May, she will begin writing for the Business Day section.