Okay, you know what?  I’m really starting to like Charles Bukowski‘s Pulp.  Sure, it’s lazy and a bit too clever for its own good, simplistic and superficial, and full of potty humor so lame that it would make a 12-year-old roll his eyes.  But, a good deal of it is inspiredly moronic and/or moronically inspired.  It’s not what I would call “literature” but, as a parody of literature, it’s not half bad.  In some places, it is (if you’ll pardon the cliché) laugh-out-loud funny.

How did I miss the 160th anniversary of the publication of Moby-Dick yesterday?  Well, Melville House reminds me, and publishes a copy of the remarkable original contract for the book.  “Most striking … is how similar this is to a modern publishing contract, down to the wording in a lot of places.”

Also, there is an intriguing cast-bronze buckle dated to 600 CE, discovered buried on the Seward Peninsula.  Yeah, that’s way up in Alaska.  And, if 600 CE + Alaska + cast-bronze artifact doesn’t make you go “huh?!” then maybe you and I can’t be friends.  (Just kidding, of course we can.)

BEST READS OF THE DAY: A tie between an interview with author-songwriter John Wesley Harding (no, not the guy who “shot a man just for snoring too loud” … that was John Wesley Hardin) and a fantastic letter to the National Post about Philip Marchand’s review of Stephen King‘s 11/22/63.