Monday's Body of Work

You Won't See It Coming

Meathooks. We all throw them from time to time. In terms of short stories, Ray Carver delivered many mighty blows. Regardless, in recent times a series of blows have landed on the chin of Gordon Lish — the notorious editor of Carver’s stories — and his particularly affecting oomph: Stephen King judges one for the writer in the New York Times. To all you time-continuum spaceballs out there, we’re almost at the end of a decade. And you know what that means: Book Covers. Turn your steam-resistant goggles toward some of the best. Alice Munro dazzles with another collection of stories, as well as her refusal to go gently into any sort of night. Camus’ son  and Sarkozy get earthy and dig up the ghost of one of France’s patron saints, the mystery man Joe Sacco keeps his messy stories nice and clean, and Mary Beard weighs in on the importance of Classics. Elsewhere, Gladwell and Pinker go toe to toe, and The Poetry Foundation finds merit in Project Runway, which, to our mind, constitutes a meathook of TKO proportions. — Kevin Murphy

– As brilliant and talented as he was, Ray Carver was also the destructive, ­everything-in-the-pot kind of drinker who hits bottom, then starts burrowing deeper. Longtime A.A.’s know that drunks like Carver are master practitioners of the geographical cure, refusing to recognize that if you put an out-of-control boozer on a plane in California, an out-of-control boozer is going to get off in Chicago. Or Iowa. Or Mexico. — Raymond Carver in the NY Times

– To summarize a decade’s worth of brilliant design with 20 covers is little more than an exercise in futility. We can all agree, however, that the best part of passing into a new digit bracket is the lists that come with it. This collection is little more than a representation of my own tastes, but I tried to choose works which were representative of their respective years. — Book Covers in Book Cover Archive

Existentialism: You Gotta Problem With It?

– The son of Albert Camus has joined the French leftwing establishment in opposing a plan by President Sarkozy to elevate the country’s greatest post-war writer by moving his remains to the Panthéon necropolis in Paris. Jean Camus, 64, one of the late writer’s twin children, sided with penseurs and politicians who are accusing Mr Sarkozy of trying to cash in on the fame of the Algerian-born novelist and philosopher who died in a car crash, at the age of 46, near Paris in January 1960. — Albert Camus in the Times Online

– For five decades, Munro has written mostly short stories, quietly breaking every rule with glorious results. One common definition of the short story is that it should focus on a single turning point in a person’s life. But Munro goes further, following her characters into the future after their lives have been shattered, in cool prose that never falters, no matter how impossible the subject. — Alice Munro in SF Gate

– In his books, Joe Sacco always draws himself the same way: neat and compact, a small bag slung across his body, a notebook invariably in his hand. At a single glance, the reader understands that he is both reporter and innocent abroad, an unlikely combination that propels him not only to ask difficult questions, but to go on asking them long after all the other hacks have given up and gone home. You sense in this black-and-white outline, too, a certain taut, physical alertness. Should there be trouble, he is, it seems, ready to run. — Joe Sacco in the Guardian

– There’s a terrible tendency for the present government and some mums and dads to see university as some kind of professional training. Of course, there are some excellent subjects like that – say, medicine and law. But for me university is all about training the brain. With Classics you are studying so many things, philosophy, archaeology, language, all of which help you in almost any job you want to go for. I know I would say that, but Classics is inherently interesting and absolutely relevant! — Mary Beard in The Browser

Punked By Pinker

– Steven Pinker’s recent review of Malcolm Gladwell’s “What the Dog Saw” prompted a flurry of response in the blogosphere. Gladwell posted two lengthy responses on his blog, which themselves generated some interesting discussion threads about NFL quarterbacks, intelligence research and New Yorker fact checking. — Gladwell vs. Pinker in Paper Cuts

– If you follow contemporary poetry but you haven’t been following Project Runway, the popular cable TV show now in its sixth season, you might be surprised to hear that the show holds lessons for poetry critics. To learn them, you first have to know how the TV show works: aspiring fashion designers compete for a chance to show their work in New York’s Bryant Park alongside couture’s big names, among other prizes. Each week contestants design clothes to meet a challenge: successful designers and guest judges rate the results. — Project Runway in the Poetry Foundation

Video: Project Runway’s Peculiar Poetics