⇒Emily Gould's fury at the total ease of James Frey's literary rehabilitation, and how "the story of the fraud he perpetrated on four million readers will drift further and further down the page in any profile written about him, until it's in the last paragraph, until it's in the last line, until it's not there at all."

⇒Self-described "midlist" author Peter Sacks on "we splendid authors... on the dark side of the publishing world," churning out serious non-fiction that gets ignored by consumers in favor of "name-calling books by political hacks and right-wing bitches with flowing Breck-girl hair."

(Although, actually, if the current hardcover nonfiction bestsellers are anything to go by, what American readers really love right now is musicians' wives, military heroes, pro football, and reality TV...and the back half of the top ten is given over to meaty tomes by Christopher Hitchens, Alan Weisman, and Ishmael Beah, along with Michael Korda's new Eisenhower bio and the Freaknomics phenomenon. So maybe Sacks's theory needs some work.)