ever wonder

"It’s 2068 and Adam Leith Gollner, who half a century ago wrote a bestselling book about fruit hunters, is at a cocktail party where the drinks are resveratrol shakes and the chatter is about memory uploading, genitalia’s new-found obsolescence and stem-cell injections that will allow injured laggards to finish an ultramarathon of the circumference of the moon. […]
     In the course of the book, Gollner visits a former professor, a Jesuit (now suffering from Alzheimer’s – and a stark example, perhaps, of why people become interested in life extension); goes hunting for David Copperfield’s fountain of youth; travels to Esalen, where a psychologist warns him about becoming 'caterpillar soup' on a vision quest; visits a cryogenics lab and meets the proprietor, a man who, within seconds of his wife’s death, began operating on her to prepare her for freezing; and so very much more."
— Lisan Jutras, The Globe and Mail
Read more…

Buy this book here...

Faulkner's Litmus Test

Faulkner's map og Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi
(From: U. of Michigan Library via Hub Pages)

"I write. It is what I have always done, searching for what Robert Frost called 'a momentary stay against confusion.'

     But I want more than just wisdom — every writer does, outside the most hopeless of naïfs. Like most of my fellow scribes, I also yearn for fame, greatness and immortality, preferably in that order. Allow me to be immodest: I would like to write the best thing about Brooklyn since William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice and a campus novel to rival Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. I would also like to write a play and perhaps some poetry, if there is time.
     Let me go further: If you do not want your own version of the above, if you are indeed a reasonable and/or responsible young man or woman, then literature is not for you. If you have a compelling personal story to tell, tell it to a therapist. An MBA will do you far more good than an MFA. Pursue writing only if you are pathologically unable to pursue anything else. Otherwise, consider advertising." — Alexander Nazaryan, Salon
Read more…