"Visible Hitchcock" b/w "Paperback Writer"

Robyn Hitchcock and Elvis Costello join Nick Lowe onstage in New York to sing "If I Fell" (and "Mystery Train"):




Read the writeup over at Driftwood Singers.

(Bonus: here he sings "Surgery" for Bryant Park Presents.)

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In other Beatles news: The U.K. Times on the possible origins of "Paperback Writer."

(Via Jenny D.)

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And speaking of "paperback writer"—the new Cosmopolitan's "Paperback Page-Turners: What every chick should have in her beach bag" features Personal Days!

"If you think Pam and Jim have it bad, try spending a day with Lizzie, Jonah, and Pru at their 'Office'-like company. You'll laugh, cringe, and thank God you don't work there."

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And finally:

Among the books published under [Philip M. Parker's] name are “The Official Patient’s Sourcebook on Acne Rosacea” ($24.95 and 168 pages long); “Stickler Syndrome: A Bibliography and Dictionary for Physicians, Patients and Genome Researchers” ($28.95 for 126 pages); and “The 2007-2012 Outlook for Tufted Washable Scatter Rugs, Bathmats and Sets That Measure 6-Feet by 9-Feet or Smaller in India” ($495 for 144 pages).

But these are not conventional books, and it is perhaps more accurate to call Mr. Parker a compiler than an author. Mr. Parker, who is also the chaired professor of management science at Insead (a business school with campuses in Fontainebleau, France, and Singapore), has developed computer algorithms that collect publicly available information on a subject — broad or obscure — and, aided by his 60 to 70 computers and six or seven programmers, he turns the results into books in a range of genres, many of them in the range of 150 pages and printed only when a customer buys one.

If this sounds like cheating to the layman’s ear, it does not to Mr. Parker, who holds some provocative — and apparently profitable — ideas on what constitutes a book. While the most popular of his books may sell hundreds of copies, he said, many have sales in the dozens, often to medical libraries collecting nearly everything he produces. He has extended his technique to crossword puzzles, rudimentary poetry and even to scripts for animated game shows.

And he is laying the groundwork for romance novels generated by new algorithms. “I’ve already set it up,” he said. “There are only so many body parts.”

—Noam Cohen, "He Wrote 200,000 Books (But Computers Did Some of the Work)," NYT