Online Stuff

I know it's not Friday, but I need to catch up. Here are a few random things I've found to look at in my spare time:

• Mark Z. Danielewski interviewed at Metromix about his latest experimental novel, Facebook, and idyllic writing retreats to Montana. *Spoiler Alert* For those that haven't read (nor flipped through) one of his books, he uses lists. Lots of them.
• Peter Sacks takes a break from his labor in the trenches of the "midlist" to diagnose the poor state of reading and writing in America today. The culprit: " the Huxleyan drug of American Idol and Paris Hilton." I think my favorite part of the article is the link right beneath the title, which takes the concerned, intelligent, liberal, middle-class reader to some articles about Paris Hilton. And people say The Huffington Post doesn't have a sense of humor. Actually, I don't know if they say that, it just seemed like a good, empty phrase to add here.
• Whatever happened to Scotland's literary efflorescence? I did not understand this article at all, and so I thought it was hilarious.
• George Saunders on Letterman here. Watch it now.
• Bookninja is funny, but it certainly helps to have an easy target.
• World's longest novel by Richard Grossman et al to be published by FC2. To me, this sounds like it's not just one doorstop, but 4,000 doorstops.
• Poet David Keeling has been rating his rejections here for a while now. It's a pretty interesting project and has gotten him a small bit of attention from the Virginia Quarterly Review. Local writer Clifford Garstang hasn't quite followed Keeling's lead, but he does have a funny rejection story in his latest post. I still can't figure out what journal he's talking about though.