http://abovethelaw.com/2010/01/who_dat_needs_a_continuance.php
The Neglected Books Page, a truly excellent website, draws my attention to a project by science fiction novelist Jo Walton to uncover worthy but obscure science fiction and fantasy:
http://neglectedbooks.com/?p=318
http://www.tor.com.vhost.zerolag.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=58654
In a lengthy two-part essay at The Quarterly Conversation, John Domini discusses the lack of respect that mainstream American critics pay to non-conventional American fiction (they're a little more forgiving with foreigners) and offers three examples of helpful approaches to specific non-realist novels. This is an attractive piece, written in good spirits and crucially not using "experimental" fiction as a cudgel to bash conventional realist fiction (although many supporters of the conventional have done the reverse, as the essay details). "I come in peace," Domini writes; "my analysis intends to reveal how John Barth and Tom Wolfe might shake hands."
http://quarterlyconversation.com/against-the-impossible-to-explain-the-postmodern-novel-and-society
http://quarterlyconversation.com/against-the-impossible-to-explain-the-postmodern-novel-and-society-part-2
British novelist Tiffany Murray offers a nice list of the Top Ten Rock'n'Roll Novels, several of them unfamiliar to me. Props to Murray for including Wuthering Heights on the grounds that Heathcliff is "flinty, elemental, feral, beautiful, violent, mad, gothic, and so very, very rock n' roll." I'll buy that.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jan/27/tiffany-murray-rock-n-roll-novels
A Journey Round My Skull highlights the work of artist/musician Graham Lambkin. It is worth clicking through to the earlier posts on Lambkin at the same blog, and from all the posts to the various Lambkin links:
http://ajourneyroundmyskull.blogspot.com/2010/01/graham-lambkin-3.html
The New York Times tries to explain what's up with the foreign language Oscar. I think they run a variant on this article every year:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/movies/awardsseason/31oscar.html
Among notables born on this date are composers Thomas Tallis, Johann Joachim Quantz, and Charles Martin Loeffler, historian Barbara Tuchman, theatrical producer Hal Prince, German architect Johann Baltasar Neumann, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, novelists Richard Brautigan, Shirley Hazzard (Australia), and A.H. Tammsaare (Estonia), poets Adalbert von Chamisso (Germany), Les Barker (England) and Nikolai Glazkov (Russia), children's author Lloyd Alexander, science fiction novelist Gregory Benford, architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner, jazz trumpeter Roy Eldridge, actors John Ireland, Gene Hackman, and Vanessa Redgrave, and golfer Payne Stewart. Stewart, who died bizarrely in a 1999 incident in which a private jet lost cabin pressure, is one of my sartorial heroes for his unique, impeccable, and historic fashion sense on the golf course. He revived the tradition of wearing plus-fours and flat caps and gave it his own additional spin through spirited color coordination. The PGA now gives an annual award in his name to "a player who shows respect for the traditions of the game, commitment to uphold the game's heritage of charitable support and professional and meticulous presentation of himself and the sport through his dress and conduct."
