It’s been seven hours and fifteen days.

SUNFLOWER MYSTERY: My daughter went to bed with five flowers on her shelf, and woke up with four flowers and a stem. Did she eat it in her sleep? Did a deer sneak into her room? Did it spontaneously combust??

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Happy Bloomsday to those who celebrate it.

RT @honeyandwaxbks: @motokorich My CM story: years ago, when I worked for Bauman Rare Books, he called the gallery. I picked up and he told….

An impeccable stylist, an irascible wit, a stubborn and sometimes maddening provocateur, a great novelist gone. RIP.

When we got to the main legislative chamber for the interview, there was Amis: showered, sharp, gracious, utterly charming. Besides Hitler’s sex life he talked a lot that day about the soul and how important it is to honor it.

Maybe predictably, he wasn’t in the greenroom at the appointed time, and the festival staffer who was dispatched to his hotel room said he was nowhere to be found. The volunteers were panicked. “I guess we’ll walk you over and hope for the best,” one told me.

“Can you imagine believing a taxi driver is the equal of Christopher Hitchens?” he asked as the crowd looked silently on and I grew increasingly worried about how our interview might go the next day.

The night before, seemingly very drunk, he had stumbled through his keynote speech at the festival’s gala dinner, mocking Princess Di’s death and defending elitism on the grounds that some people are inherently better than others.

In 2018 I interviewed Martin Amis at the Texas Book Festival about his Holocaust novel “The Zone of Interest” (narrated, like “Time’s Arrow,” from the German POV), and he turned the talk memorably to Hitler’s sex life.

Has there ever been a hornier serious poet than the Sharon Olds of “The Wellspring”?.

Overheard on the train just now: “The thing about the King James version is the prose is so bad.” Shots fired!.

Are You There, God? It's Me, Adolf.

Speaking as an editor, sometimes there’s a very fine line between “cajole” and “cudgel”.

Wordle 613 X/6. ⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜.⬜🟩🟨⬜⬜.⬜🟩⬜⬜🟨.⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩.⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩.⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩. Broke my streak of 118, and my 100% solve record since the NYT’s acquisition.

Radio is playing “Crocodile Rock” right now and all I can think of during the falsetto is “Elmo’s World.”.

RT @paulisci: 2022 Headline of the Year nominee (September)

Just started the audio version of “Jazz,” read by Toni herself, and the teeth-sucking first word (or first noise?) is a clinching argument for the glory of audiobooks.

Text from my son

Raking leaves is the hockey equivalent of wax-on wax-off.