delicate cutters
Time has decided that Philip Roth is America's best novelist. I guess he's kind of an obvious pick, being the only member of the old guard whose recent work has garnered much attention. The case for Pynchon is interesting too, but the whole thing principally highlights how silly the idea of a single Best Novelist is.
If you haven't been following the Postcards from Europe at the Laboratorium, you ought to check them out. My favorite photos thus far are Earl from "Red Meat" on a bridge in Bratislava, Slovak Republic and composers' tombstones in Vienna. All of the architecture is just so apt: Beethoven's obelisk is phallic and monumental; Brahms and Schubert have flower-strewn Greek-cum-Romantic affairs that would serve well as illustrations for, say, Shelley's "Adonais"; and Schoenberg's headstone looks like a big block of tofu.
Kids in Cornwall learn about bad words in school. Ride on, motherfucker!
