An amusing Chronicle of Higher Education article by William Major and Bryan Sinche calling for the delisting of Ralph Waldo Emerson from the literary canon has been making the rounds. I even linked to it myself, because I enjoy strong words like these:

1. Forest Hills. I don't know these people but I feel like I do.

1. Thank you to my generous readers for allowing me to workshop my memoir on this site during the full course of this year. I quietly announced this project last December, and when I look back at my initial announcement I see how much my concept has evolved since then. For one thing, I originally conceived it as a 15-year memoir (1993 to 2008), but at about the halfway point I realized that the story would have a perfect arc if I ended it at 2003.

I've been working hard, and I really need this three-day weekend coming my way. Hell yeah!

Another surprise guest will be writing this weekend's review of the New York Times Book Review. Check back on Sunday for, I hope, a wholly new perspective.

Till then, just a few links for a happy Spring day.

1. Japanese search parties have found the remains of poet and volcano enthusiast Craig Arnold, who had been running a blog called The Volcano Pilgrim. Jacket Copy's piece on Craig's death is the best of many I've read.

The New York Times Book Review puzzles me today. I don't understand why Leah Hager Cohen's cover review of Joanna Scott's novel Follow Me is illustrated by a woman's face surrounded by little tadpoles with human faces while the article's opening paragraphs compare Scott's books to the American frontier myths of Davy Crockett. The tadpoles with human faces show up later in the article, but I can't figure out what they're doing in this novel or how it's all supposed to fit together.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, to see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when it came time to die, to discover that I had not lived.
-- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

1. Turner Classic Movies (the one cable channel movie I'd keep if I could keep only one) just ran an old chestnut from 1943, The Human Comedy, William Saroyan's story of a couple of sweet kids named Ulysses and Homer growing up in inland California's raisin country, starring Mickey Rooney. The movie is corny as hell but I loved every minute.