License to ille

1. Paper Cuts' Gregory Cowles on Carpenter's Gothic: "Gaddis is not in fact all that difficult."

2. Dzyd Levi on his defining summer '08 reads, Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives and Gary Indiana's Do Everything In the Dark.

3. Dzyd Paul on McCain's repetition of "my friends" (in Slate): "Like Dole's use of the dissociative third person—or illeism, a propensity also shared by Elmo and the Incredible Hulk—this year's obsessive invocations to friendship invite scrutiny."