Thursday notes

1. The new New-York Ghost is out, featuring beautifully numbing extracts from the decades-spanning diary of a reclusive farmer. Visit the site to subscribe (it's free!).

2. From D.T. Max's New Yorker piece on the UT archive: Working titles for DeLillo's End Zone included "The Self-Erasing Word" and "Modes of Disaster Technology." (Everyone knows White Noise's original title, right?)

3. More summer tunes already? YES. New Psychic Envelopes song is up—"Providence #3."

4. I really need to get with the program and keep reading Darren Wershler-Henry's The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of Typewriting (just reviewed in the TLS). And also on the hyphenated-name list: Daniel Heller-Roazen's The Inner Touch, which gets an early vote for cover of the year.

5. The Beatlemaniac over at Restricted View didn't care for the New Yorker's McCartney piece: "I would also be too embarrassed to write this sentence: 'I suggested to McCartney that it's difficult to know whom to blame for Ono's presence at the [Let It Be] sessions—Lennon, who brought her along, or Ono, who stayed when she was obviously unwelcome.' Did you now. I am sure Paul thanked you for that insight." Ha!

6. I've Been Reading Lately—rapidly becoming one of my favorite lit-blogs—looks at Simenon, who "comes across as a sort of unholy mix of Julian McLaren-Ross, Anthony Powell, William Roughead, and Michael Lesy. Which, now that I think about it, would also serve as a good description of Luc Sante..." What a good mix of referents, eh?

7. Remind me to return my library books today.