As if I needed more prodding to write about David Shields' Reality Hunger, the book appears in today's New York Times Book Review, respectfully reviewed by Luc Sante, who urges (I nod approvingly here) a calm and sympathetic reading of the controversial work:

On the whole, though, he is a benevolent and broad-minded revolutionary, urging a hundred flowers to bloom, toppling only the outmoded and corrupt institutions. His book may not presage sweeping changes in the immediate future, but it probably heralds what will be the dominant modes in years and decades to come. The essay will come into its own and cease being viewed as the stepchild of literature. Some version of the novel will endure as long as gossip and daydreaming do, but maybe it will become more aerated and less controlling. There will be a lot more creative use of uncertainty, of cognitive dissonance, of messiness and self- consciousness and high-spirited looting. And reality will be ever more necessary and harder to come by.

There are biographies, and then there are psychological biographies. The fallacies and hazards of the psychobiography form are easy to name, but the form can produce miracles when used well. Donald E. Pease's Theodor Seuss Geisel, a brief, spirited new study of the life and work of the great Dr. Seuss, provides a satisfying and surprising look at the motivations and half-hidden meanings behind classic children's books like Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham and How The Grinch Stole Christmas.

The biographer brings out the heavy psychological equipment to analyze the first Dr. Seuss children's book, And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, published in 1937 when the author was 33 years old. The book depicts a child with a vivid imagination facing off against a stern father who rejects his son's artistic spirit. Pease argues convincingly that young Theodor Seuss Geisel's moral battle with his strict father shaped everything about his work, and that it was the very intensity of this father-son battle that gave the early Dr. Seuss books their power and energy.

Why is there so little good old-fashioned literary satire on the scene today? Reviewing Sam Lipsyte's The Ask in todays New York Times Book Review, Lydia Millet examines:

Literary satire has become a rare form in America over the past three decades. When it does make an appearance, it almost passes for a nostalgic gesture despite its typically cutting-edge content. As a result, Lipsyte is one of a handful of living American satirists (and when I say “handful” I mean a very tiny hand, with three fingers at most, including the thumb) who can tell a traditional story while remaining foul-mouthed and dirty enough to occupy the literary vanguard. This stuff wouldn’t play well at, say, meetings of the D.A.R. — too bad in a way, because it might not hurt them to hear it. Lipsyte is not only a smooth sentence-maker, he’s also a gifted critic of power.

If you've been hanging around here, you know I'm a big advocate of e-books and digital publishing. I don't consider myself an expert in this business, but I read and usually agree with knowledgeable industry observers who advocate for change, radical experimentation and quick adoption of digital technologies, such as Kassia Krozser, Clay Shirky and Richard Nash.

But I'm stepping out onto my own limb with today's digital publishing headline, and I'm surprising even myself, because it's not the kind of thing I'd expect me to say. I don't know if any of my fellow digital progressives will agree with me, but here it is: I'm starting to wonder if the e-book revolution is going to happen at all.

I'm really impressed that 104 of 148 commenters who guessed about the mystery literary photo I posted on Wednesday correctly identified The Great Gatsby as the novel in question. Four other novels that got some mentions were To Kill A Mockingbird, Huckleberry Finn, Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath. Reasonable guesses all, but the fact that the photo was taken in 1924 was the giveaway.

Can you identify the famous literary work represented in the photograph above? Here are a couple of hints:

• You have definitely read this novel. It's one of the most widely loved novels of all time.

• A person is killed, during one of the novel's climactic scenes, by the forked road near the top right of the photo.

1. What on earth are these little kids doing on this "Kiddie-A-Go-Go" 1967 TV show? Is it the Pony? The Frug, the Watusi, the Mashed Potato, the Alligator? It's pretty cute and weird, whatever they're doing.

2. Friend of LitKicks (FOL) Tim Barrus at Electric Literature! What a combination.

(Here Michael Norris continues his exploration of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. The previous installment on The Guermantes Way is here. Original painting "Oriane" by David Richardson.)

M.’s infatuation with Oriane, the Duchesse de Guermantes in Marcel Proust's Guermantes Way, proves to be short lived. One day his mother tells him “You really must stop hanging about trying to meet Mme de Guermantes. You’re becoming a laughing stock.” And with that, he is cured of the malady of his obsession, much more easily than Swann was cured of his obsession with Odette, but once again Proust makes the comparison between love and disease. At this same time, Saint-Loup breaks with Rachel. He goes to Morocco to forget the affair, but sends M. a letter telling him that Mme Stermaria, a beautiful and desirable young woman recently divorced from her husband, is now available. This offers M. occasion for a new passion. He writes her a note, inviting her to dinner, and then waits in his room for an answer.

1. S. A. Griffin, a Los Angeles poet, actor, beatnik and longtime friend of LitKicks, is going to be filling the shell of a bomb with pages of poetry and touring the USA with it in 2010.

It's a funny thing about book reviews. It's been documented by publishing industry researchers that a negative book review can sometimes bump sales as well as a positive one, and good writers have bemoaned the fact that a great review, even a great front cover review in the New York Times Book Review, might not help sales at all. Of course, publisher incompetence can help cause the latter situation, as was recently revealed in a rather shocking New York Magazine interview: