Monday's Body of Work

Our Father Who Art in Bedazzler...

Monday is the great day of forward-ness. From this cliff there is no place to look, other than into the giant rockjam that is our beautiful and craggy life. Sort of. Be around again, it’s great to be Monday. Don’t you know we have magic? We’re a famous magician, entirely capable of slipping off of Myrtle Beach rooftops and eluding Vashon Island deer. But about that more is later. Now we can talk shop. And in that, from our bag of magic, we pull a mafucca rabbit. Bedazzle, fool. In other words, dance. ‘Cuz here’s your carrot, rabbit: Bookslut grows immense in Gillian Flynn’s wake and Tim O’Brien talks home life in the Atlantic. We await Jacko’s bio, memorialize the prose-genius Leonard Michaels, talk cold climes for hunkies and reflect once more on the indoctrination of the old and new English language. That’s all. Except we were lying about Myrtle Beach and the deer. — Kevin Murphy

– In 1961 a new edition of an old and esteemed dictionary was released. The publisher courted publicity, noting the great expense ($3.5 million) and amount of work (757 editor years) that went into its making. But the book was ill-received. It was judged “subversive” and denounced in the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, Life, and dozens of other newspapers, magazines, and professional journals. — Dictionaries in Ain’t That The Truth

– In 2007, Gillian Flynn released her debut novel Sharp Objects which was nominated for an Edgar Award. I did not read Sharp Objects, but I intend to now in hopes that it is anywhere nearly as compelling as her sophomore effort. It is hard to imagine a novel that so agilely balances the suspense of a mystery whodunit with the interior complexity of a psychological narrative as Dark Places. — Gillian Flynn in Bookslut

– Our household seems caught up in a kind of reverse evolution, tumbling backward through the millennia, alighting in an age in which the ancestral tail was both common and quietly useful. Like our tree-dwelling relatives, the O’Brien tribe has grown comfortable with its tails. We groom them. We miss them at bath time. We view their absence in our fellow man with pity and suspicion. — Tim O’Brien in the Atlantic

Bad, Dead, and Still Raking in Millions.

– Publishers including Random House have bought the rights to reprint Michael Jackson’s best-selling 1988 autobiography, “Moonwalk,” Random House said on Friday. The book, in which the late pop icon talks of his fame, music career and famous family, will be released in October following his death last month. It will sell for $25. — Michael Jackson in Reuters

– “The girl had a slender boyish figure and blondish hair. I thought nobody but me considered her striking or had noticed the subtle perfection of her beautiful face. When I told my friend Julian that the most beautiful girl in Michigan was in Warren’s class, he named her. He told me that she modeled naked for art students, she had a horrible reputation for licentiousness, everybody knew who she was, and that he was in love with her too. I decided that I was ready to forgive her everything. — Leonard Michaels in the Washington Post

– Well, naturally I am recommending “Cold” as a great read. All authors should recommend their own work. But really I have a long list of recommendations. I probably annoy people by constantly saying things like “you must have read Bernd Heinrich’s ‘Winter World’ ” or “that reminds me of a passage in David Laskin’s ‘The Children’s Blizzard.’ ” — Bill  Streever in Paper Cuts

Video: Antartica, A Land On Ice