At the New York Sun, Alberto Manguel reviews William Goldbloom Bloch’s The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges’ Library of Babel.

It isn’t necessarily an advantage in the poetry world, especially the American poetry world, to be known for writing things that aren’t poetry. We’re suspicious of dabblers; we’d prefer for the poet to have, as Emerson put it, “only this one dream, which holds him like an insanity,” and we sometimes view single-minded devotion to poetry’s institutions as evidence of that larger dedication.

The New York Times has David Orr’s review of Clive James’s Opal Sunset.

More Intelligent Life has an article on the perfumes of Christopher Brosius, including one described as “First Edition, Russian and Moroccan Leather, Binding Cloth and a hint of Wood Polish.”

Recommended.

In the Washington Post, Ron Charles reviews Per Petterson’s To Siberia.

At n+1 Mark Greif writes of the political theology of the GOP.

If I had to play for one side or the other, and I had no other thoughts or feelings but the will to side with genius, I’d play for the Republicans. The GOP convention trumped the Democratic—because some intelligence there is, in their control room, who can conceive of mastery on the grandest scale; a moral monster, to be sure; a jinni of evil; a trafficker in political eschatology, unafraid to trespass on myths of the gravest consequence. Someone behind the scenes held the key and boldly turned it: someone foresaw that the means of hatching a McCain triumphant was to make of him a risen God. This was the burden of the Vice Presidential and Presidential addresses, and the galvanism of the last few days.

Not recommended.

Britain is a nation of museums, where they have collected everything worth collecting. A good museum typically requires generations of hard work. With long and careful planning the British have plundered collectibles from Egypt, India and Mexico, from China, and all corners of the world, carting valuables home like tireless ants. They spent no small amount of taxpayers’ money doing this, and they have spent even more on preservation.

They were spending pounds sterling, and everyone knows how far the pound goes.

The Guardian has “Collecting” by Zhu Wen.

In the New York Times Magazine, Jonathan Mahler profiles Auburn Professor of Philosophy Kelly Jolley.

He says that philosophy requires a certain rare and innate ability — the ability to step outside yourself and observe your own mind in the act of thinking. In this respect, Jolley recognizes that his detractors have a point when they criticize his approach to teaching. “It’s aristocratic in the sense that any selection based on talent is aristocratic,” he told me. “I know it offends everyone’s sense of democracy, this idea that everyone’s equal, but we all know that’s just not true.”

The Washington Post lists the authors who will appear at the National Book Festival on Saturday, 27 September.

Recommended with reservations.

In the Guardian, Alasdair Gray reacts to reading his biography.

Jacki Lyden of National Public Radio’s All Things Considered interviews Daniel Mendelsohn, author of How Beautiful It Is And How Easily It Can Be Broken.

The New York Times has Janet Maslin’s review of Dennis Lehane’s The Given Day.

While writing for The New Yorker, George Saunders doesn’t blink, for he is Right.

I’m finding it hard to concentrate, as my eyes are killing me, due to I have not blinked since I started writing this. And, me being Regular, it takes a long time for me to write something this long.

Where was I? Ah, yes: I hate Élites. Which is why, whenever I am having brain surgery, or eye surgery, which is sometimes necessary due to all my non-blinking, I always hire some random Regular guy, with shaking hands if possible, who is also a drunk, scared of the sight of blood, and harbors a secret dislike for me.

Not recommended.

So what’s causing this, exactly—this inchoate dread that’s suddenly turned “choate,” as one insider puts it? The anxiety would be endurable if it was just a function of the late-Bush economy: Sales at the five big publishers were up 0.5 percent in the first half of this year, bookstore sales tanked in June, and a full-year decline is expected. But pretty much every aspect of the business seems to be in turmoil. There’s the floundering of the few remaining semi-independent midsize publishers; the ouster of two powerful CEOs—one who inspired editors and one who at least let them be; the desperate race to evolve into e-book producers; the dire state of Borders, the only real competitor to Barnes & Noble; the feeling that outrageous money is being wasted on mediocre books; and Amazon.com, which many publishers look upon as a power-hungry monster bent on cornering the whole business.

In New York Magazine Boris Kachka writes of the end of publishing as we know it.

At Salon Laura Miller remembers David Foster Wallace.

Michael Dirda of the Washington Post reviews Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog.

. . .halfway through [the novel], the lives of Paloma and Madame Michel are unexpectedly transformed. A Japanese gentleman named Kakuro Ozu buys a vacant apartment. Though clearly rich, he is also immensely courteous and shrewd, and immediately perceives that neither the little girl nor the concierge is just what she seems. Before long, Monsieur Ozu is gently contriving some little tests to discover more about their secret lives. And this leads to developments that range from the comic to the touching to the heartbreaking.

The Atlantic Monthly has “Searching” by Billy Collins.

Recommended.

In her preview at Bloomberg, Laurie Muchnick asserts that it will “take a big novel to compete with the U.S. election this fall.”

What is it with Jews and sex? While the literature of eros has always been multicultural — from the “Kama Sutra” to “The Decameron,” Ovid’s “Art of Love” to “The Story of O” — it is hard to think of another culture as consistently, persistently obsessed with the subject as Jewish America, circa 1950-2000.

In the New York Sun, Ruth Franklin reviews Philip Roth’s Indignation.

The short list for this year’s Booker prize is now available. One curried proof with garlic naan and India pale for the distinguished Mr. Sutherland, please.

Not recommended.

As part of its celebration of the contest’s fortieth anniversary, the Guardian has a Booker prize retrospective featuring the comments of a judge from each year of the prize’s run.

David Lodge (1989):

Our shortlist meeting was the longest to date, and much of it was taken up with discussion of Martin Amis’s London Fields. It is public knowledge that two of the judges on the panel, Maggie Gee and Helen McNeil, successfully resisted its inclusion on the shortlist, an outcome I still regret. The final judging session was uncontroversial - all but one of us were unequivocally in favour of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day. I consider it one of the best Booker winners I have read.

The success of the prize has had an enormous impact on the reception of literary fiction and other kinds of writing, not only directly, but also indirectly through the proliferation of new prizes that have imitated it. But the overtly competitive nature of these prizes, heightened by the publication of longlists and shortlists, takes its psychological toll on writers; and, given the large element of chance in the composition and operation of judging panels, the importance now attached to prizes in our literary culture seems excessive. A committee is a blunt instrument of literary criticism.

Recommended with reservations.

National Public Radio’s All Things Considered reports that Russia’s authoritarian turn has produced a literary boom.

In the Village Voice, Giles Harvey previews the Library of America’s collection of the poems of John Ashbery.

Our decor is old-fashioned, timeless: bare wooden floors, lots of photographs on the walls, wooden bookshelves. The red sofa is only one stone in the mosaic at Wörtersee. It’s a thoughtfully designed bookstore that packs all our favorites into a tiny space and makes room on the walls for lots of drawings and prints by local artists.

Bookforum interviews German publisher and bookstore owner Peter Hinke.

Poets & Writers notes that Melbourne has been named a city of literature by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.

Slate has Sara Mosle’s review of Paul Tough’s Whatever It Takes.

[The book] is an inspirational story about one man’s efforts to boost educational achievement in New York City’s Harlem. The book is also a sobering tale of how such good intentions, alone, are often not enough. Put the two together, and you have everything you need to know not only about inner-city education, poverty, and charter schools but about the realism that is essential to ambitious reform.