I’ve been floundering on the book all week. And I’m intent on turning that around. (My aura of grim determination as I flap through the house in my pajamas is something to behold.) So not a peep from me till Monday.

A few yummies to tide you over:
• V.S. Naipaul declares he’s going to retire. And he’s taking the future of the novel with him, apparently: “Naipaul also declared that the genre of `novel’ is also breathing its last. ‘I have no faith in the survival of the novel. It is almost over. The world has changed and people do not have the time to give that a book requires. A book needs great thought.’ ”

(Link via Moorish Girl.)

• Maud and a friend recollect their time in Harry Crews ‘ fiction class. This spurs the Rake to put up some MFA memories of his own. He solicits your own stories.

• I can tell this could quickly become addictive: Take a peek inside the Hollywood slushpile at Query Letters I Love, where some anonymous soul is reprinting the “best” pitches to come across her desk. There are so many good ones it’s hard to pick but I’m going to go with this one for the Stoned Undergrad High Concept Award:

“Imagine a comprehensive story of a Company – told using only business newspaper excerpts, a la Wall Street Journal, about it ever since its beginning. Now imagine, the company is Humanity – and the newspaper is World History.”

Whoa.

Add in the young Neanderthal on a quest for a magic flower, and the black extraterrestrial accidentally landed in South Carolina, and it starts to sound a lot like my novel.

(Link via Defamer.)