Roundup: High Fuel Costs

Larry McMurtry is “outta gas” when it comes to writing fiction, he told a Dallas crowd last night during a conversation with Diana Ossana, his Brokeback Mountain screenwriting partner.

In the Rake, Max Ross takes the all-star break as an opportunity to note a couple of new baseball novels, and revisit a couple of familiar ones, including Philip Roth‘s exasperating The Great American Novel.

For the past two years Wayne State University has been amassing an sizable collection of rare books and manuscripts by black writers with some connection to Detroit. Among the holdings are works by Amiri Baraka, Donald Goines, W.E.B. DuBois, and more.

Ted Gioia has launched a new feature at Blogcritics Magazine called “The New Canon,” addressing the best works of fiction published since 1985. Not a bad way to start.