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Midweek Miscellany

An excerpt from Jay McInerney’s introduction to Joy Division (published by Rizzoli), accompanied by a slideshow of Kevin Cummins’ photographs of the band, in Vanity Fair.

Sandwiches with Ginsberg — Patti Smith reads from Just Kids, the story of her friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe, at National Book Awards in New York.

“It’s not all pristine snow and leather goggles”The Guardian reviews I.N.J. Culbard’s adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft. Culbard talks about illustrating and adapting Lovecraft at the SelfMadeHero blog.

Also at The Guardian: A 26 letter slideshow from David Sacks’ new book, Alphabets: A Miscellany of Letters (pictured below: illustration by Jonathan Lander, 2009):

Slow Down — An interview with Pushcart Prize editor Bill Henderson at Kirkus Reviews:

My friends in commercial publishing tell me that indeed times are terrifying. Nobody knows where the commercial world is headed as it tries to make a profit. The villains are those who attempt to corner the e-book market and announce that they have hundreds of thousands of titles available instantly… Why is this speed of any interest to anybody? Serious readers take their time in savoring a book. But suddenly we’ve all turned into speed freaks. Those who will suffer most from this, interestingly, are the big-box superstores that can only stock a mere 100,000 titles in their walls… The independent bookstores may, on the other hand, do very well because they can treat customers as human beings.

And finally…

Interviews with typographer Erik Spiekermann and book maven Sarah Weinman at From the Desks Of