Friday's Literary Grab Bag

It’s Friday. Yessss. So let’s take it nice and easy, shall we? OK, first up is Francis Bacon. There’s an interesting article about his belief in the power of meat in Intelligent Life. Then we have the classic dubbya. The man wrote an essay about his father. Gawker put it to the test. The result: W is no Joan Didion. A debut novel from an African-American author wins a pricey Irish prize, the foolishness and virtue of work are extolled in Salon, UC Riverside attains a trove of rare Thai literature, and finally, to sand things down, we have Liesl Schillinger. You know, from the NY Times Book Review. She’s got a Web site of her own, too. On it she hones the art of crafting modern language. Thanks, Liesl. – Kevin Murphy

– If you were in London in the 1960s and wanted to chat up Francis Bacon, all you had to do was head to the Colony Room, a junky club on Dean Street in Soho, where he routinely held court. He was such a fixture there that the Colony’s owner and den-mother, a crass woman named Muriel Belcher, called him “daughter”. As Bacon’s critical reputation grew, so did his financial means, and he was known for covering the tab for his friends and leaving lavish tips. What he valued more than money was conversation, and he was as comfortable telling a dirty joke as he was discussing Aeschylus. — Francis Bacon in Intelligent Life

– Tonight The Daily Beast re-printed an essay George W. Bush wrote ten years ago for P.O.V. magazine to commemorate his father’s birthday titled, “The First Son.” Just for kicks, we ran it through some of those online writing analyzers. — George W. Bush on Gawker

– Michael Thomas won one of English language fiction’s richest prizes on Thursday for a novel depicting the difficulty of attaining the American Dream for an African American. “Man Gone Down” scooped the 100,000-euro ($140,000) International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, beating off competition from 145 titles nominated by public libraries from 41 countries. — IMPAC in Reuters

– Adv. ‘sell-‘mell Describing the foolhardy action of moving through traffic (walking, cycling, driving, etc.) while texting, surfing the net, or talking on a cell phone. Usage: Andy nearly got hit by a truck while walking cell-mell across Fifth Avenue, texting his girlfriend; but since he was wearing earphones and kept his eyes on the phone till he reached the curb, he never even noticed. – Modern Language on Word Birds

– Justin McDaniel has spent decades prowling the remote corners of Southeast Asia in search of literary treasure. He has scoured Cambodia, roamed the national library of Laos, picked over Burmese books in Myanmar and nosed about rural monasteries in Thailand. — Thai Literature in the LA Times

– In “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work,” Alain de Botton tackles the modern problem of labor in his characteristically untamed, thoughtful style, revealing the ways work can bring us meaning or strip our lives of it, depending on our circumstances. — Working on Salon

Video of Merle Haggard Playing Working Man Blues