Tina Dupuy at mediabistro.com's FishbowlLA tracks the angry Amazon.com customer reviews for Amanda Marcotte's It's a Jungle Out There, a self-described "feminist survival guide to politically ihospitable environments." The problem lies in the artwork lifted from a 1950s comic book that introduces each chapter, which features a blonde jungle beauty rescuing a not-so-great white hunter from hostile savages. "I find it laughable that the author even attempted to discuss racism when the illustrations in the book were completely racist in themselves," ran a typical complaint.

The Amazon reviews were spillover from a controversy that'd been brewing on the blogosphere around the same time, which Marcotte's book viewed by some as just the latest evidence of an alleged problem relating to women of color on the part of Seal Press, the indie publisher behind the book. As it happens, the issue has been largely resolved: Marcotte apologized, saying, "I didn't pick the offensive imagery in my book, but I should have caught it sooner than now. I didn't and there’s no excuse." She further promised the artwork will be removed from future printings, and Seal says they're already going back to the printers, as well as seeking out training in racial sensitivity to avoid similar missteps in the future.

Remember the time Fox News pissed on Kurt Vonnegut's grave? The network upheld its belles lettres legacy the other night as Greg Gutfeld and his Red Eye cohorts branded Stephen King "partially brain-dead" and "a raging alcoholic," along with cracking jokes about running him over in a van, because they didn't like the way he phrased his exhortation to teens to read more:

Granted: "If you can read, you can walk into a job later on; if you can't, then you've got the Army, Iraq, I don't know, something like that" isn't the best possible endorsement for literacy—frankly, as the son of Vietnam-era Marines, I find it more than a little offensive—and the initial framing of the discussion, where Fox commentator Mike Baker dismisses the remark as "leftist elitist crap," is coarse but not entirely out of bounds—but the conversation quickly moves away from King's political stance and his alleged lack of patriotism to roughly three minutes of speculation about whether that infamous car accident left him with permanent brain damage. But let's face it: People who sit there asking "wasn't there some NFL player who went into the army, too?" aren't exactly in a position to question anybody else's grasp of current events. (Although maybe, he added sarcastically, Fox just doesn't like their talent to bring up Pat Tillman on air because his example raises too many awkward questions about the way the war's been fought.)

As Tina Dupuy of FishbowlLA comments, "A writer—telling kids to read—what a loser. It's the best nerd bashing-geek punching prom ever!"

Personally, I think the whole "I'm [YOUR NAME HERE] and I approve this" YouTube joke has run its course, but this fake campaign ad for the paperback release of Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict is still moderately amusing.

My favorite is still the attack ad against Immanuel Kant, though. Well, maybe the one attacking Thomas Jefferson.

Keith Josef Adkins wants to tell you about his stint as "a disgruntled assistant to a top notch writer," who he'll only describe as "a woman, African-American, lived in California and the musical predecessor to Rock-n-Roll was the muse that made her pen go buck-wild and win a few top-notch awards."

Oh, come on, Keith. That's not even trying to obscure this beloved author's identity. Anyway, here's the story:

"The real doozy was the time she reprimanded me in front of a group of grad students for sabotaging her career. I was given the responsibility of removing an overabundance of praise from a story by a student of color. Her rationale: she didn't want the other students to think she was playing favorites based on ethnicity. Well, apparently I screwed up. During a group reading, another student noticed an area on the story where things looked smudged. My employer was livid. In front of everyone, I was accused of setting her up to fail. For trying to destroy the career of an African-American writer."

There's also an anecdote about how he started a fire in her kitchen, but that's not nearly as dramatic.

UPDATE: I've been informed that I fell for an obvious (though perhaps not fully intentional) misdirect, and that it's probably not who I thought it was. On the other hand, the answer is still up for grabs...

My iPod may have room for several thousand songs on it, but I usually wind up obsessing over three or four over the course of a given week. These last few days, it's been The Mountain Goats' "Lovecraft in Brooklyn." This live version doesn't quite replicate the particular intensity of the one on the Heretic Pride album, where John Darnielle's vocal anxiety builds up on the final verse to a pitch worthy of The Call's Modern Romans (which I'm reasonably certain is the most prophetic album of all time, let alone the best rock album of the '80s), but it'll give you a basic idea of what has me hitting the repeat button over and over.

What's your favorite song with a literary bent? Tell us about it in the comments—but no fair using One Ring Zero; that would be too easy.

After yesterday's NY Times story about the New York Public Library's official embrace of Stephen Schwarzman, the Wall Street tycoon who's donating $100 million to the institution and getting the main building renamed in his honor—carved on each side of the major entrances, in tasteful lettering less than 12 inches high—we were reminded of Michael Gross, who wrote about Schwarzman in his role as the unauthorized historian of 740 Park Avenue ("the world's richest apartment building," as the book's subtitle puts it). Well, "wrote about" is a bit of an understatement; Gross has publicly challenged Schwarzman's philanthropy, in the book and in subsequent articles, for not being as generous as it could be (PDF file). This time around, he has a bit of snark to share: "I wasn't entirely surprised to learn that he’d filled the bookshelves in his trophy apartment with books by the yard, bought at the Strand Bookstore," Gross writes on his blog. "But hey, better books he hasn't read than no books at all!"

(In Schwarzman's defense, not that he needs it from the likes of me, I haven't read most of the books on my bookshelves, or stacked on the floor all over my foyer, either. That's why they're there: for me to get around to in my copious free time. And it's not like we know whether he went with the subject-specific assortment or the antique leather bindings.)

Our pal Paddy Johnson of Art Fag City came up with this online quiz: "Art Fair or Comic Con?" See how accurately you can assess high and low cultural fanatics at a glance!

(How'd you do? I only managed 6 out of 12...)

⇒Turns out there was a really good reason that last Thursday's tribute to Stan Lee took place at the Virgin Megastore: he's just been hired as an editor at Virgin Comics, where he'll be overseeing a line of superhero books including one focused on a team that he'll be writing himself. "I'm going to get started working on it right away and I'm very excited about doing something that will be fresh and breaking new ground," Lee told the Los Angeles Times. "I can't give away the details or the names yet, but I have some exciting things in mind. (Dig the Mukesh Singh artwork created to promote the deal!)

⇒In another comics-related story, New York Comic Con attendees found out Friday evening that >prosecutors in Georgia have given up on their bumbling attempts to convict comics shop owner Gordon Lee of distributing obscene material to a minor. "All charges are dismissed," Comic Book Legal Defense Fund director Charles Brownstein confirmed to Newsarama. "Gordon's nightmarish ordeal is finally over."

⇒Remember when Theodora Keogh died earlier this year, and there was much frustration over how none of the awesome-sounding novels she'd written were in print? Maud Newton tells us several of her novels are now available in e-book editions.

⇒The fanboy (and fangirl!) crushes that GalleyCat and UnBeige have on Chip Kidd are exceedingly well-documented, so it shouldn't surprise you to know that Stephanie Murg is already on top of tonight's "The World According to Chip Kidd lecture at the Fashion Institute of Technology. We expect a full report later this week!

At the end of a very long Q&A session at a reading I went to last night, someone asked the debut novelist at the podium whether he'd accept a profit-sharing, no-advance deal from a publisher like Bob Miller's nascent HarperCollins unit or any of the indie publishers who have been experimenting with that sort of thing. The author was like, "Yes." But then he qualified this initial response by explaining that if he did this he would want everyone to know that he hadn't received an advance, so that he wouldn't be expected to, for example, pick up the check in a restaurant. Ha.