What we read while exiting through the evacuation slide….
- NPI-favorite Jonathan Franzen (so what if he’s not as favorite as David Foster Wallace…he’s still good) is getting a lot of positive pub with the impending release of his new novel, Freedom. Franzen received Time cover treatment (the article is only excerpted online…cheap, right?) along with solid reviews from Sam Anderson at New York and Benjamin Alsup at Esquire. Alan Cheuse at NPR was less enthusiastic, if, it seems, unjustifiably so. And The Guardian tries to sum up what it means for the author and The Novel (in a general sense).
- An interesting account of working with George Lucas on Star Wars. Apparently, the Ewoks weren’t always in the cards….
- We love language, we love sports (they are both categories at NPI), so why wouldn’t we love Steve Rushin on language in sports?
- Continuing the sports theme, here’s Jack McCallum on the Dream Team reunion as they go into the Hall of Fame and Dana O’Neil (continuing her own strong summer) on the impact of Ali Farokhmenesh’s shot at Northern Iowa. The highs of both of those sporting events were perhaps countered by the low at Sunday’s PGA Championship, where Dustin Johnson was penalized on the 72nd hole due to a technicality. Golf.com’s roundtable discusses an event that has already been compared ad nauseam to Armando Galarraga’s imperfect perfect game.
- Continuing the language theme, we couldn’t see this story and not think of one of our favorite commercials of yore.
- Joe Posnanski assesses who is the worst everyday player in baseball and analyzes defensive statistics as well.
- Speaking of defense, definitely the legal defense of the week.
