David Denby, the New Yorker movie critic (not the good one), continues to bait us in interview after interview so we'll write something about his book Snark, so it will sell. Okay fine, here:

Friend of the commoner Tom Wolfe is all white on the outside. But don't judge. The Observer caught up with the fancy author and had him explain what the rappers are talking about (SEX):

There's nothing easier than hating on dumb young telemarketers and their annoying sales pitches. Though it is possible to summon some sympathy for the unfortunate Bloomberg sales caller who mistakenly thought that Vanity Fair contributing editor Seth Mnookin was a Vanity Fair PR person. Outrageous! Doesn't this anonymous business services salesman read Seth Mnookin's stories? Seth just had a big story in Vanity Fair about Bloomberg, so he was surprised enough to transcribe the entire message he got:

Oh professional media beef-starter Michael Wolff, is there any power to which you will not speak the truth, or at least some tough-sounding simulacrum thereof? No, there is not. News Corp. mogul Rupert Murdoch preemptively slammed Vanity Fair writer Wolff's upcoming biography of him, in a tone of indeterminate sincerity. Now Wolff has responded, telling the Observer that Rupert's just "a little embarrassed" about what he let slip, and what he calls are errors are really just "an internal political thing." That's much nicer than what he had to say about former New Yorker editor Tina Brown's new Daily Beast:

POINT: "This is tacky even for the Onion, not too funny," a tipster emails us. The story in question? "NASCAR Cancels Remainder Of Season Following David Foster Wallace's Death." Sample: "At least for the moment, drivers found it hard to think about the Sprint Cup. 'All race long on Sunday, I was dealing with the unreality presented me by his absence,' said #16 3M Ford Fusion driver Greg Biffle...'I first read Infinite Jest in 1998 when my gas-can man gave me a copy when I was a rookie in the Craftsman Truck Series.'" COUNTERPOINT: No, it's funny. [The Onion]

Former Star editor Bonnie Fuller, who floats menacingly over the celebrity media like mist on a bog, has a new web venture in the works. She also has an insatiable thirst for money. And, of course, she has but a tenuous grasp on reality as a whole. Which of these is the explanation for the elusive question: Why the fuck has she spent the last several months writing the same meandering column over and over for increasingly unlikely outlets? It started earlier this summer with her ruminations in Ad Age about Madonna's celebrity conspiracy, Obama's celebrity conspiracy, and Sarah Palin's celebrity conspiracy. What appeal did these columns hold for members of the ad industry? Idle entertainment, we imagine. But now Bonnie's writing for MediaPost, for Christ's sake. About celebrities!

Geez, not two months after potato-loving NYT reporter David Carr was declared the next big thing in druggie memoir publishing, the literati is already turning its attention to Bill Clegg, the next druggie memoir star. Which we note mostly so that we can use this picture that we took with our cameraphone last night: David Carr underneath a Barnes & Noble banner with his very own picture on it! Ain't that a kick? Click to enlarge.

Alex Bogusky, the it-boy ad wizard who thinks up all those Burger King commercials, is worried about America's fat ass! So he's writing a new diet book called The 9-Inch Diet. Oh sorry, we see that it's "not just another diet book." This one has added expertise:

Female rapper Lil Kim and female rapper #2 Foxy Brown are both being sued for the same reason: being procrastinating authors. Ha, [we're-all-in-same-boat joke]! Simon & Schuster has filed suit against both of them for taking their advances ($40K and $75K, respectively) and then not writing a damn word. Ha, if only [Keith Gessen joke]! And they have no excuse for not doing it-they were both in jail! Ha, [OJ-confessional-book joke]! I'm sure you'll all grieve for the lost opportunity to read Lil Kim's prospective book, which was titled "Untitled Novel." Ha, how come these things never happen to [blogger-turned-author joke]? [NYS]

If you only read the Washington Post for one thing, read it for its offbeat profiles of weird people in the Style section. Screw politics! Today they profile an author named Max Holland, who's spent the last 12 years—12 years!—working on a book about the Kennedy assassination. His big revelation in that decade-plus of research? That maybe there was a gunshot before the Zapruder film started filming. But, a shot that missed! So who cares, right? Are Kennedy assassination people the most serious-minded crazies in America? Very possibly:

Ladies and gentlemen, the proud new owner of the FSU Middlebrow Remix Version of Keith Gessen's All The Sad Young Literary Men is Andrew Krucoff-the former "Gawker Mascot" once fired by Conde Nast for leaking to this website. He was also recently called a "pussy" by the author in question, Keith Gessen! You can see the circle of life turning, turning. So what will become of this coveted and (we daresay) historic volume? All can now be revealed:

Bottled water is a bit like smoking: deep down, we all knew there was something wrong with it from day one. Environmentalism has been a widespread subject in our public consciousness for more than 30 years now. Did anyone really believe that getting our water out of 16-ounce plastic bottles would be an efficient long-term solution for humanity? Despite that, the bottled water industry has done an admirable job using sly marketing magic to make us all feel like chemical-ridden cheapskates for drinking out of the tap. And a new book called Bottlemania breaks down the corporate spin techniques in a straightforward way that already has me drinking exclusively out of the toilet:

Some anonymous author is writing a book about how much the advertising industry sucks. Excuse me; it's about "where advertising is going." But he wants YOU, the insider, to tell him why the industry sucks. And he'll pay you $200 an hour to do it! Well, if your "half hour tops" of "the sewage that is in your head" makes the book, he'll give you 100 bucks, pro-rated. "Don't even edit it," he says. OR, you can send the same story to us, we'll pay you nothing, but the satisfaction of seeing it published here will be even more sensational! A good sideline for the creative soul considering quitting the wicked industry for good. The full Craigslist ad from the lazy muckraker, after the jump:

Sloane Crosley, author, popular publicist, self-effacing autobiographer, HBO series subject, gossip monster assembler, big ass chronicler, partygoer, and etiquette specialist has a new video interview out, and damned if she's not commenting on us and the rest of the "snarky urban jungle." Whoa, you write about somebody 27 times and all of a sudden it's like they can't stop talking about you. It's okay though—she thinks all this vicious online gossip is a net positive(!), a view that I tried to get across to Keith Gessen at his party, without success. Perhaps he will be persuaded by listening to his pal Sloane! Watch Crosley explain why she tolerates Gawker and its commenters, but Village Voice readers made her cry, below:

Running With Scissors author Augusten Burroughs gives an on-camera interview in which he reveals his secret writing process to the world. He works in bed! Gets up, showers, gets dressed, walks the dog, makes the bed, then gets back in bed. Weird. More importantly, he shares his simple and foolproof solution to overcoming writer's block. Hint: "It's like dropping a couple of Alka-Seltzer tablets into water. Fizz!...If you want to find out how powerful the storm is, fly the plane into the eye of the storm!" Okay! The revelatory video is below:

If you ever find yourself needing an official corporate quote from CBS, the man who'll give it to you is Gil Schwartz, the Tiffany Network's top flack. And no matter how you feel about their news anchor, you have to give CBS credit: they're the only major media company to have a top PR person who writes books under a pseudonym about how much corporate America sucks. Schwartz's pen name is "Stanley Bing," and he's been writing for decades (currently, for Fortune) about all the business world's bullshit. Bing's real identity was outed more than 20 years ago, but—more bonus points—the network didn't fire him. They gave him a promotion! So how is CBS' Executive Vice President of Communications spending his time these days? By advising the world on how to slack off at their jobs:

James Frey on his writing style: "I also never really read my own writing, so I try to make it perfect the first time through." [WP]

N+1 founder and sad young literary man Keith Gessen sat down for a Big Think interview last week. He touched on everything from "Dating as a Historical Phenomenon" to "Is political writing political activism?" But the only bit I was curious enough to watch was his response to the question, "Why does Gawker hate you?" According to Gessen, it's because Gawker types once read a lot of books, then we gave up on the value system of books, but we're wrong and we will lose! I don't know, man; I just think it's annoying how much you talk about Harvard. The full clip of this latest volley in New York's most frivolous cultural clash, below:

You've surely seen a copy of it on the walls of your local Sunday school, A.A. meeting, or weed-filled hipster apartment, ironically: Footprints in the Sand, the mawkish little poem/ parable about Jesus carrying you when you couldn't carry yourself. The work has become a gold mine of merchandising opportunities, which is what everyone, including Jesus, really cares about (sandals aren't free). So naturally three different people have been squabbling for years over who wrote it. Now, the son of one proclaimed author is taking the other claimants to court for copyright infringement. Sigh. It would really be tidier if Jesus could just settle this himself. After the jump, the three slightly different versions of the poem that claim to be the original. One thing we can all agree on is that god needs to pick more creative messengers:

90-year-old McSweeney's-approved Bowl of Cherries author Millard Kaufman says he doesn't work on a computer because "I don't like all the electricity." He also "once ingested cobra venom — experimentally— and awoke to find himself playing golf in the nude." God bless him. [WP]