1. Here at Litkicks, we love pretty much anything David Byrne ever does. His latest enigma is a series of nonexistent iPhone apps, including "Invisible Me" above, which will be displayed as part of a Pace Gallery show called "Social Media" in New York City this fall.

2. "Very Naked, No Lunch." So intones an Austrian hipster in Beat Today, a film that explores the meaning of the Beat Generation as it is manifested today within the counterculture of Central Europe. It's by Tilman Otto Wagner of Vienna, who has also written a book called The Beat Generation and Scholastic Analysis.

3. Exciting news! Litkicks favorite Art Spiegelman is writing a book about his book Maus, aptly titled MetaMaus. He'll be appearing at the 92nd Street Y in New York City to explain what this book will be.

1. Lint, a novel by Steve Aylett about a famous but nonexistent writer that we told you about a few years ago, is now a movie! The trailer features supportive words from the legendary Alan Moore (Watchmen), Jeff Vandermeer, Mitzi Szereto and our own Bill Ectric, so you know there must be something special going on here.

2. Marty Beckerman has written a book inspired by Ernest Hemingway called The Heming Way: How to Unleash the Booze-Inhaling, Animal-Slaughtering, War-Glorifying, Hairy-Chested, Retro-Sexual Legend Within... Just Like Papa!.

1. I've read a few good tributes to the late Beat/hippie poet Ira Cohen, a good guy I used to see around the East Village a lot. I did a poetry reading with him at the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus in 2002, but I never knew that Ira Cohen invented the 70s-era headshop art trend known as Mylar painting. (Photo of Ira Cohen from a video by Laki Vazakas).

2. You may have heard the news: e-books are hot. This time around, I'm on the bandwagon. I'll be attending the BookExpo gathering next week in New York City, and I'm sure electronic publishing will be the biggest buzz there. I'm a few days behind schedule with my new Kindle book ... the title and cover will be revealed soon. I'm very happy with the ongoing sales figures for my first Kindle book, Why Ayn Rand Is Wrong (and Why It Matters), and I'm proud that this book has remained in the top 100 Kindle bestsellers in the Politics->Ideology category for the entire month, and was #40 on the list this weekend.

1. Here's a newly-found old video of Beat Generation/Summer of Love poet Michael McClure reading poetry to caged lions. The last section of the poem consists of McClure yelling "roar" repeatedly. The video might strike some as precious -- Steve Silberman called it "beat kitsch" in a recent tweet -- but it gets cool around the time the lions start roaring back in harmony with McClure. If you can get a bunch of lions to respond to your poetry, you must be doing something right.

2. Suzuki Beane! I heard long ago that YA-novelist Louise Fitzhugh (Harriet the Spy is her most famous book, though I liked The Long Secret even better) began her writing career with an illustrated book, Suzuki Beane, a parody of Hilary Knight's Eloise starring a punky kid with beatnik parents. But I'd never been able to find a copy of the book until I saw a link to this digital version in a Boing-Boing article that also links to a surprising TV show pilot version of the book (the show never got made, which is too bad, because it looks pretty cute). Serious fans of Harriet M. Welsch, Sport and Beth-Ellen will find many echoes of their favorite Fitzhugh books in Suzuki Beane, particularly in the affectionate depictions of the tortuous relationships that sometimes exist between eccentric, artistic parents and their stubborn kids.

Here's some stuff I've checked out and liked lately:

It's annoying that Keith Richards is more widely known today for his long-past hard-partying rock star excesses than for being (still) a world-class musician and songwriter. I almost didn't want to read his extensive, acclaimed new autobiography Life because I'm not interested in hearing "the stories", and I certainly don't care about the legend. But I do care about the great music and career of the Rolling Stones, so I dove into the book, and was immediately captured by the author's warm, thoughtful voice.

Life is at its best when Keith Richards talks about the music, about rhythm guitar, about the wisdom of Chicago blues (as he understood it growing up in Dartford, a suburb of London). There are brilliant passages about the lazy guitar tricks used by Jimmy Reed, about the difference between six-string standard tuning and five-string open tuning, about what it's like to collaborate with the talented but egotistical Mick Jagger. Richards is laying down an ethical point of view in this memoir: he values friends (male and female) and close family (his parents and his children) above all else, he laughs at the trappings of fame (his disgusted reaction to Mick Jagger's recent knighthood is fun to read), he reads avidly and keeps a vast library in his own house, he works hard as hell to make every Stones record and concert as good as it can be. He also gave up heroin thirty years ago, and I hope this book will help people realize that junkie-hood was never the most interesting thing about Keith Richards.

NOTE: trying something new, I listened to this book on audio CDs in my car instead of reading it. I don't always enjoy the audio format, but Johnny Depp's well-considered impersonation of Keith Richards's distinctive slow drawl and chuckle makes this one work. Well done.

If it's summer, and if the New York Times Book Review is touting beach imagery and "Summer Reading" in its current issue, then why the hell am I indoors reviewing it, instead of out there having fun?

Because I'm a dummy, that's why. But here we go with today's Book Review, which turns out to be a rather good one.

Jonathan Franzen's upcoming Freedom is surely the most anticipated literary novel of the year, at least from the publishing industry's perspective, since he has shown a rare ability to write books that people buy and talk about. I don't quite feel the excitement myself -- I liked The Corrections enough to finish it, but was hardly blown away -- but I'll play along and follow Freedom's progress when it comes out (it will surely be on the cover of the Book Review) in September. Meanwhile, I like the unusual essay Franzen contributes to the Book Review today. It's unusual because the book, Christine Stead's The Man Who Loved Children, was published in 1940 and is not widely known today. It's not even being reissued in a "commemorative edition" (as far as I can tell), though it probably will now be reissued with Franzen's essay as the introduction, and I'll probably buy it. Franzen's long essay digs deep into the book, apparently a Corrections-esque parable about a weird family, and makes a strong impression.

T. S. Eliot is not obliged to love me. The topic of anti-semitism comes up often when this great poet and literary critic is mentioned, but I think it's a sign of our chronic over-sensitivity that we consider it a moral felony of the highest order for a poet to be a snob. T. S. Eliot has the right to hate whoever he wants.

He never hurt anybody, and I never saw any evidence that he wanted to. I love his work, his Dante-esque vision, his moral seriousness, his (yes) sense of humor. If he met me, maybe he'd hate me because I'm a Jew. He'd probably also hate me because I'm a modern American hipster slacker, a fast-food eater, a casual dresser. Who cares? It doesn't mean he wanted to Holocaust me to death.

This is going to be one of the hardest blog posts I've ever written. Not because it's painful, but because the topic is controversial, and I'm going to be arguing with a giant, and my words could be very easily misunderstood. I want to talk about Jewish identity, Israel and anti-semitism.

The occasion is this weekend's New York Times Book Review, which is titled "The Jewish Question" and features book reviews by two high-profile Jewish writers on the cover: Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England by Anthony Julius, reviewed by Harold Bloom, and two books on Martin Heidegger, Heidegger: Tne Introduction of Nazism Into Philosophy in Light of the Unpublished Seminars of 1933-1935 by Emmanuel Faye, and Stranger From Abroad: Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, Friendship and Forgiveness by Daniel Maier-Katkin, reviewed by Adam Kirsch.

1. I visited the beautiful city of Nashville, Tennessee for the first time two years ago. I can't believe how much of this great town has been damaged in last week's flood.

2. It's very weird that attempted Times Square terrorist Faisal Shahzad left a DVD of the anomie-striven movie Up In The Air to be found in his home. Novelist Walter Kirn, who we recently interviewed about the film of his book, wrote this on Twitter: "times sq. bomber leaving behind copy of 'up in the air' reminds me of chapman, lennon's killer, and catcher in the rye. icky feeling now."

Strange currents in the hometown rag today.

When I saw a book called The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter on the cover of this weekend's New York Times Book Review I figured it was a new McSweeney's book or some photoblog tie-in. It turns out to be a serious 500-page study, not of white people per se but of the concept of "whiteness" as it has rippled through history. The author is an African-American professor (and also, it turns out, a good artist), which gives the title some edge. The author of this article is Linda Gordon, also a professor and, based on the "Up Front" sketch of her face, a white person. So Nell Painter is talking about Linda Gordon's people here, and Linda Gordon also seems to have a lot to say about white people. Sounds like an okay book, though unfortunately a photoblog tie-in would probably sell better.