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It’s turning fifty this month. It’s much younger than the interroverti, which gives the tender interrobang a materteral pat on the points. By the way, the HTML is & #8253 ; (without the spaces).

–Emily Gordon

At Flavorpill, vintage covers of The Phantom Tollbooth from all over the world. The 2006 German edition is particularly gorgeous, as is the ethereal 2007 Chinese cover. But who in their right mind would junk Jules Feiffer’s illustrations?
–Emily Gordon

Education for the Real World:
Look carefully at the map of the “city” (traversed by “I-494”) in this subway ad.
–Jonathan Taylor

Emily Gordon writes to recommend:
An affectionate, persuasive, sensible defense of the memoir by Deb Olin Unferth. (Guernica magazine)
Another inventive chronicler of our time: an interview with Jesse Thorn, impresario of the radio show and podcast “The Sound of Young America.” (Nieman Journalism Lab)
Two pieces about the meaning of bed bugs, which erode both sanity and civilization: in Guernica again and in the Utne Reader, which excerpted the piece from California magazine. As we know from Atul Gawande, these pieces will probably make you feel itchy, and hearing that the problem is getting you worse will probably make you anxious. But believe me, an uncontrollable but temporary phantom itch and a fleeting bout of anxiety (and the useful knowledge that you should put your suitcase in your hotel bathtub) is a thousand times better than having actual bed bugs. So long, Brooklyn!

Jonathan Taylor writes:
In a de facto way, I don’t post links to great Awl posts, because how would I choose, where would I stop? But I must pay tribute to this monument of literary parody: Selections From V.S. Naipaul’s Yelp Account, by Mike Barthel.

Jonathan Taylor writes:
A tidbit of something to look forward to, in the Guardian‘s article on the death of Patrick Leigh Fermor at age 96. Fermor in 1977 and 1986 published two volumes recounting a 1933-34 journey from Holland to Constantinople on foot: A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water, which ended at the Iron Gates of the Danube, between Serbia and Romania.

Readers are still awaiting the promised third leg of Leigh Fermor’s trip, despite the author’s repeated promises to “pull my socks up and get on with it” and his 2007 declaration that he was learning to type so that he could complete it more quickly.
Cooper, who visited him at his Greek home earlier this year, said that the writer had been working on corrections to a finished text. “A early draft of the third volume has existed for some time, and will be published in due course,” she said.

Emily Gordon writes:
“So intense is the need to connect, say the authors, that isolated individuals sometimes form parasocial relations with pets or TV characters.”
–From a Publishers Weekly review

Jonathan Taylor writes:
A quaintly short list! An Emdashes tradition.

Jonathan Taylor writes:

Have You Seen the Pearl? Tolkin’s ‘Rapture’ Gets Its Due

Jonathan Taylor writes:

Bon appetit, techies!