1. To spite him. He doesn’t care if you read his work. Williamson realizes that most great writers aren’t truly appreciated in their own time. He doesn’t want your attention. He cares about art, not popularity. He also cares more about his novels and essays than he does about short fiction. If this book eventually garners more attention than his others, it will, no doubt, piss him off.

2. Known primarily for his novels and literary criticism, this is Williamson’s first story collection. It gives the reader an opportunity to see his approach to the short story. Although his take on the short story in the introduction is interesting and insightful, it is not a glowing defense of the genre: “The American Short Story, as a popular form, is extinct. Its descendant, the Short Story as Art Form, survives, albeit in the literary fringes of the culture” (16). Points like these are not what a reader might expect of an author attempting to sell a short story collection.

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That’s the cover we debuted last week for Ryan Ridge’s new collection of stories, Hunters & Gamblers. All of us who worked on the book were excited, and the art and the editing and the words, they all seemed to come together naturally. Which is why it was disappointing to learn, after roughly 10 minutes of the book’s page going live, that the indie music band Born Ruffians had used the same image for their debut album Red, Yellow & Blue, nearly three years ago.

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No long, drawn-out intro today. Just five tickets (that’s right, Eddie, not two) to paradise. Enjoy.

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I spent Saturday night sitting at the bar of a music hall. The place itself has horrible acoustics. It’s a converted train warehouse. In order to sit at the bar and see the stage, I was at the very end of the former aisles, right next to the band’s merchandise table. The greater the distance from the stage, the worse the sound. The band would be categorized as y’allternative, so I kept wondering about their line of authenticity: did the guitarist’s country goatee authenticate the group and did it make up for the bassist’s obnoxious wannabe rockstar antics? There are few finite answers to the question of authenticity, and, of course, they are subjective and not a simple close-ended interrogative response. If the sound had been better, I might not even have been thinking about this. I admit that I spend a lot of time validating my own authenticity.

Today I wonder how legit these players and places are. Paul Theroux heads off the beaten path. Hugh Hefner takes the role of sincere feminist. His cohort Larry Flynt might be a bona fide intellectual. Next, it is not a new question, but it’s more relevant than ever: College tuition has the highest inflation rate in the United States, is it worth it? In closing, some Vonnegut: literary plotlines get mathematically plotlined.