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From the LA Times:
“David Foster Wallace, the novelist, essayist and humorist best known for his 1996 tome “Infinite Jest,” was found dead last night at his home in Claremont, according to the Claremont Police Department. He was 46.

“Jackie Morales, a records clerk at the Claremont Police Department, said Wallace’s wife called police at 9:30 p.m. Friday saying she had returned home to find her husband had hanged himself. Wallace won a cult following for his dark humor and ironic wit, which was on display in such books as “Girl with Curious Hair” and “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.” In 1997, he received a MacArthur “genius” grant.”

Apart from his fiction, DFW wrote brilliantly about mathematics and tennis. Here is his 2006 piece on Roger Federer.

To the person who borrowed my hardcover copy of A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: It’s been years. Give it back.

Tributes:
“He wrote about the maddening impossibility of scrutinizing yourself without also scrutinizing yourself scrutinizing yourself and so on, ad infinitum, a vertiginous spiral of narcissism — because not even the most merciless self- examination can ignore the probability that you are simultaneously congratulating yourself for your soul-searching, that you are posing.” Laura Miller in Salon.

“David Foster Wallace used his prodigious gifts as a writer — his manic, exuberant prose, his ferocious powers of observation, his ability to fuse avant-garde techniques with old-fashioned moral seriousness — to create a series of strobe-lit portraits of a millennial America overdosing on the drugs of entertainment and self-gratification, and to capture, in the words of the musician Robert Plant, the myriad “deep and meaningless” facets of contemporary life.” Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times.

“That Mr. Sendak fears that his work is inadequate, that he is racked with insecurity and anxiety, is no surprise. For more than 50 years that has been the hallmark of his art. The extermination of most of his relatives and millions of other Jews by the Nazis; the intrusive, unemployed immigrants who survived and crowded his parents’ small apartment; his sickly childhood; his mother’s dark moods; his own ever-present depression — all lurk below the surface of his work, frequently breaking through in meticulously drawn, fantastical ways.

“He is not, as children’s book writers are often supposed, an everyman’s grandpapa. His hatreds are fierce and grand, as if produced by Cecil B. DeMille. He hates his uncle (who made a cruel comment about him when he was a boy); he hates anything to do with God or religion, and Judaism in particular (“We were the ‘chosen people,’ chosen to be killed?”); he hates Salman Rushdie (for writing an excoriating review of one of his books); he hates syrupy animation, which is why he is thrilled with (Spike) Jonze’s coming film of his book “Where the Wild Things Are,” despite rumors of studio discontent. . .”

Maurice Sendak’s Concerns, Beyond Where The Wild Things Are.

“Here, out of context and placed end to end (a method not unfamiliar to his attackers), are some of Machiavelli’s most salient and satanic points: “A prince, particularly a new prince, cannot afford to cultivate attributes for which men are considered good. In order to maintain the state, a prince will often be compelled to work against what is merciful, loyal, humane, upright, and scrupulous”; “A wise ruler cannot and should not keep his word when it would be to his disadvantage”; “Men must be either flattered or eliminated, because a man will readily avenge a slight grievance, but not one that is truly severe”; “A man is quicker to forget the death of his father than the loss of his patrimony.” And, the distilled spirit of this dark brew: “How one lives and how one ought to live are so far apart that he who spurns what is actually done for what ought to be done will achieve ruin rather than his own preservation.”…

The Florentine by Claudia Roth Pierpoint in the New Yorker.

No surprise that Tom Rob Smith’s Stalin-era thriller didn’t make it to the Booker Prize shortlist: judges always sneer at genre fiction, especially if it’s fun to read. Shocking that Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, probably the best-reviewed book of the season, was left out. The bookies are reeling from the exclusion of Netherland, and of The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie. I’m not complaining.

John Crace has chewed up the six shortlisted novels and spat them out into Digested Reads.

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh: “Deeti chewed on a mouthful of roti as she ground the poppies. “I must be in the book that ticks the historical, multi-layered, multicultural shortlist box,” she said. “In which case,” her husband replied, “I had better hurry up and die so that you can show off your research about the Opium Wars and sail away from Calcutta on board the Ibis with a cast of colourful characters who will use wilfully obscure and caricatured language that the judges will fall over themselves to call a tour de force of comic invention.” “You’re right,” Deeti agreed. “And the best thing is I don’t even need an ending as it’s only the first in a trilogy.”"

The other contenders here.

Kaputt, originally uploaded by saffysafina.

Past and present winners of the  Diagram Prize for oddest book titles: 
A Pictorial Book of Tongue Coatings
A Colour Atlas of Posterior Chamber Implants
Inflammatory Bowel Diseases: A Personal View
Practical Infectious Diseases 
Six-Legged Sex: The Erotic Lives Of Bugs
Neurosis Induced Cannibalism In Antarctic Pigs
The Potatoes Of Bolivia: Their Breeding Value And Evolutionary Relationships
Waterproofing Your Child
Nasal Maintenance
People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead

Z is for Zillah, originally uploaded by saffysafina.

The Gashlycrumb Tinies
by Edward Gorey

A is for Amy who fell down the stairs.
B is for Basil assaulted by bears.
C is for Clara who wasted away.
D is for Desmond thrown out of a sleigh.
E is for Ernest who choked on a peach.
F is for Fanny sucked dry by a leech.
G is for George smothered under a rug.
H is for Hector done in by a thug.
I is for Ida who drowned in a lake.
J is for James who took lye by mistake.
K is for Kate who was struck with an axe.
L is for Leo who swallowed some tacks.
M is for Maud who was swept out to sea.
N is for Neville who died of ennui.
O is for Olive run through with an awl.
P is for Prue trampled flat in a brawl.
Q is for Quentin who sank on a mire.
R is for Rhoda consumed by a fire.
S is for Susan who perished of fits.
T is for Titus who flew into bits.
U is for Una who slipped down a drain.
V is for Victor squashed under a train.
W is for Winnie embedded in ice.
X is for Xerxes devoured by mice.
Y is for Yorick whose head was knocked in.
Z is for Zillah who drank too much gin.

About Edward Gorey, Neo-Victorian writer and artist.

“Dave Freeman, co-author of “100 Things to Do Before You Die,” a travel guide and ode to odd adventures that inspired readers and imitators, died after hitting his head in a fall at his home. He was 47. Freeman died Aug. 17 after the fall at his Venice home, his father, Roy Freeman, told the Los Angeles Times on Monday.”

Ironic, unfortunate, or meta? (Reminds me of that Alanis Morissette song whose refrain should be rewritten “Isn’t it a bummer?”)

This is why I don’t like book titles that end with “Before You Die”. 1000 Movies To See Before You Die, 1000 Places to Visit Before You Die, etc. They sound like threats.

“Lying to the northwest of ancient Herculaneum, this sumptuous seaside mansion was buried beneath 30m of petrified volcanic mud during the catastrophic eruption of Mt Vesuvius on August 24, AD79. Antiquities hunters in the mid-18th century sunk shafts and dug tunnels around Herculaneum and found the villa, surfacing with a magnificent booty of bronzes and marbles. Most of these, including a svelte seated Hermes modelled in the manner of Lyssipus, now grace the National Archeological Museum in Naples.

“The excavators also found what they took to be chunks of coal deep inside the villa, and set them alight to illuminate their passage underground. Only when they noticed how many torches had solidified around an umbilicus — a core of wood or bone to which the roll was attached — did the true nature of the find become apparent. Here was a trove of ancient texts, carbonised by the heat surge of the eruption. About 1800 were eventually retrieved. . .”

The library of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, in The Australian. Via 3Quarks.

Reading the Old Testament as a child gave me my interest in ancient civilizations, as well as some of my favorite verbs (smite, slay, cleave). I could still drop everything to be an archaeologist, but for now I am content to read about antiquities. In the bargains table at National Bookstore I found The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities, From Italy’s Tomb Raiders to the World’s Greatest Museums (Clearly, they want you to know what you’re getting) by Peter Watson and Cecilia Todeschini, hardcover, P175. The book traces how priceless artifacts stolen from graves, churches, and small town museums have made their way to the world’s major museums and to million-dollar auctions at Sotheby’s.

Watson, a British journalist, starts with a 6th century krater—a large, two-handled bowl—painted by Euphronius, who is to vases what Michelangelo is to ceilings and Bernini to statues. The krater was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of New York in 1972 for a million dollars—the first time a million dollars had ever been paid for an antiquity. From the start the museum was very cagey about the provenance of the object—an assistant curator who opposed the purchase because he believed it was looted was fired, but reinstated. Turns out that it was looted, and the museum knew that it was probably looted, but they wanted it badly. The Medici of the title is a powerful antiquities dealer who at the time of publication was standing trial for conspiracy, smuggling, failing to report and receiving illicit material. (He is not related to the Florentine nobles of the Renaissance. ) The authors follow the Italian Carabinieri Art Squad on the trail of stolen treasure and detail the routine deceptions of curators, auctioneers, and collectors who drive the trade in stolen antiquities.

Apart from the huge benefits of scoring famous objects for their collections, the errant museum officers probably thought, Hey, most of the stuff in the world’s greatest museums was looted anyway. The Venetians brought home shiploads of treasure from Constantinople, and Napoleon’s legions carted back tons of artifacts from Egypt. But that was in the past; today museums are bound by rules. Or should be. Recently the British returned the Elgin Marbles to Greece. No, wait, they didn’t.

Mat with notebook, originally uploaded by Koosama.

My favorite word at the moment: skushno. “Skushno is a Russian word that is difficult to translate. It means more than dreary boredom: a spiritual void that sucks you in like a bague but intensely urgent longing.” (Gregor von Rezzori) As in, “I don’t want to go to work, I have skushno.”

Some English words you don’t encounter on a daily basis:Acnestis — the part of an animal’s back that the animal can’t reach to scratchBespawl — to splatter with salivaDeipnophobia—the fear of dinner partiesKankedort—an awkward situation.Nicholson Baker reviews Reading the OED by Ammon Shea. The author reads the entire Oxford English Dictionary in one go. Now there’s an expedition we’ve trained for.Obituary: Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, 1918-2008.

Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence may be considered the frontrunner in this year’s Booker Prize longlist, but the book I’m interested in is Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith, a detective thriller about the hunt for a serial killer in Stalinist Russia. (Serial killer+Stalin+Russia=I want to read it.) It’s supposed to be based on the events dramatised in the HBO movie, Citizen X.

In this excerpt, two boys go out hunting for a cat. Their village is starving, all the pets and rats have been eaten, and the appearance of a living cat is nothing short of miraculous. They manage to catch the cat, but they get separated, and then. . .

“He was about to call out when he swallowed his words. There was a noise. He turned sharply, looking around. The woods were dense, dark. He shut his eyes, concentrating on that sound—a rhythm: the crunch, crunch, crunch of snow. It was getting faster, louder. Adrenaline shot through Pavel’s body. He opened his eyes. There, in the darkness, was movement: a man, running. He was holding a thick, heavy branch. His strides were wide. He was sprinting straight toward Pavel. He’d heard them kill the cat and now he was going to steal their prize. But Pavel wouldn’t let him: he wouldn’t let their mother starve. He wouldn’t fail as his father had failed. He began kicking snow over the cat, trying to conceal it.

—We’re collecting . . .

Pavel’s voice trailed off as the man burst through the trees, raising the branch. Only now, seeing this man’s gaunt face and wild eyes, did Pavel realize that this man didn’t want the cat. He wanted him.”

Fortunately my cats are not going to read it.

The digested version of Christopher Ciccone’s Life With My Sister Madonna, from the Guardian:

“The deaths of Princess Diana and Gianni Versace bring us close together in 1997. When we hear the news, we both have the same two thoughts. How come these nobodies are getting all the attention and how come we’re not important enough to be assassinated? By now I have an international reputation as an interior designer - after Madonna asks me to buy a sofa from DFS for one of her 97 houses - and I count many celebrities as my close friends. “We adore you, Christopher,” say Sting, Trudie, Demi, Warren and Donatella. “We think you’re absolutely brilliant and we’d definitely be your best friends even if you weren’t Madonna’s brother.”"