Tuesday's Literary Briefing

We Hear You But Aren't Listening

Recently we came across an article written by us for the good old college newspaper. The burning topic of the day was technology — how it would affect our future. Keep in mind this was 1999, when a snarly debate about the Web’s influence still lingered. We were decidedly anti-tech at the time, and the article’s tone was downright cynical. Foresight was not prominently in mind, even as we strode our forward-thinking campus quad like the embodiment of new day media men. Even today we remain old school. A 1928 Corona typewriter rests dusty and auspicious on our desk, behind our brand new Mac. Now, engaged as we are to life online, we can’t help thinking about commitment. Writers write books and books are written about writers. Thus a commitment is formed. Hemingway was committed to America, even as he tramped around in his fishing boat. Read more in Book Forum. The novelist Sebastian Faulks voiced scathing opinions about the Qur’an. Now he’s writing its laurels. Obama is committed to his cause. Currently that includes plenty of book reading. What’s fashion got to do with literary pursuits? Check out a new blog-turned-book, which bares all. Bugs are committed to nature. Love nature or hate it, bugs live there. For your perusal Paper Cuts impales the little bastards. Finally, who touts commitment and technology better than the Secret Service? These guys have been plugging their ears with electronic acorns way longer than your fellow commuter. Concomitant techies: Live hard, or die hard trying. — Kevin Murphy

– When the United States declared war on Germany and Japan in 1941, Ernest Hemingway did not immediately travel to Europe as a journalist, as he had for the Spanish Civil War. Instead, he stuck around Havana, where he drank (Scotch and sodas, daiquiris) and went fishing. In a grandiose and ultimately ineffectual manner, he also devoted time to the Allied cause, hunting enemy submarines in a wooden fishing boat called the Pilar. — Hemingway in Book Forum

– Sebastian Faulks has moved quickly in an attempt to avert criticism over his comments about the Qur’an, which he was quoted describing as “just the rantings of a schizophrenic” with “no ethical dimension” in an interview with the Sunday Times yesterday. — Sebastian Faulks in the Guardian

Leather Jacket, Turtle Neck, Book.

– The list of books a president reads during vacation is often parsed for meaning. And ever since former President Bill Clinton put mystery writer Walter Mosley in the big leagues, many is the author who has dreamed of having a president board Air Force One carrying a copy of his or her book tucked under his arm. — Obama in Top of the Ticket

– In autumn of 2005, Scott Schuman, a stay-at-home dad and 15-year veteran of the fashion business, launched a blog to feature pictures of the stylish people he’d begun photographing on the streets of New York. In the early days, that blog – the Sartorialist – featured everything from grinning, gold-toothed gents of a certain age spotted in Chinatown to gamine cuties swaddled in scarves and thrift store garb, anonymous everymen and everywomen whose stance and style threw off sparks of individuality. — The Sartorialist in Salon

– I spent some time in the Boundary Waters area of Minnesota last month, and when I got back, to the usual “How was vacation?” questions, it was not the Unspoiled Natural Beauty or the time on the teensy beaches or the food or the family that dominated conversation, but: the bugs. — Bugs in Paper Cuts

– A few blocks from the White House, on the busy corner of H and 9th streets, stands a bland, unnamed, nine-story office building. On a wall in the lobby, large silver letters spell out the words “Worthy of Trust and Confidence.” That is the motto of the Secret Service, and the anonymous tan-brick building is the agency’s headquarters. — Secret Service in the Washington Post

Video: The Secret Service Has A Clubby Vibe