One day I'll write about David Foster Wallace's Oblivion: Stories, but not yet. I don't think he knows how to end a story and while, oddly, this doesn't matter in Infinite Jest - perhaps because you're so relieved at being able to lay the bastard to one side - it does with these (long) short stories. There's also a review by George Walden, who obviously shouldn't be dismissed for being an ex-Tory MP with ideas above his station, in which he states that 'the absence of an authorial heart throbbing close to the surface is curiously refreshing' which is so completely and utterly nonsense that it could only have appeared in the Telegraph.

On Death in Venice: 'Death in Venice belongs to that group of short novels (or novellas, or long short stories) whose cultural importance is out of all proportion to their length'. If only cultural importance always depended on length.

Also from/via RP, some worst books, being more interesting than best books. My vote's for Brave New World and why itunes is bad for jazz-type liner notes obsessives (via city of sound).

Following on from Communicator's post about the attractiveness of names, some unsuitable ones. What's wrong with Bench?