Here's Why I Only Read the LA Times for the Weather, Sports and Movie Times

LAT West (Sunday) Magazine:

Charlie Kaufman is a great American writer. Let's not equivocate or qualify this in any way. Yes, he writes for the movies; yes, his medium is the 100-plus-page script. But in all the ways that matter—his mastery of structure, his voice and vision, his recognition of the power of the word to remake the world—he stands with the finest writers of his generation, among them David Foster Wallace, Mona Simpson, Michael Chabon, Aimee Bender, Colson Whitehead and Jonathan Safran Foer. At times, he is even the best.

Kaufman's opus includes: Adaptation, Being John Malkovich, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Confessions of A Dangerous Mind

only in LA (oy vey) can the above screenplays be considered anything close to literature. Especially the one about the fantasies of the producer of the Gong Show (Confessions...)

Why I Have Withdrawal Symptoms if I Don't Get Through the NYT Each Day:

NYT website  (tobe appear in the book review section May 21, 2006)

What Is the Best Work of American Fiction of the Last 25 Years?

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Early this year, the Book Review's editor, Sam Tanenhaus, sent out a short letter to a couple of hundred prominent writers, critics, editors and other literary sages, asking them to please identify "the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years." [Read A. O. Scott's essay. See a list of the judges.] Following are the results.

THE WINNER:

Beloved

Toni Morrison
(1987)

• Review

THE RUNNERS-UP:

Underworld

Don DeLillo

(1997)

• Review

Blood Meridian

Cormac McCarthy

(1985)

• Review

Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels

John Updike

(1995)

• Review: 'Rabbit at Rest'

(1990)

• Review: 'Rabbit Is Rich'

(1981)

• Review: 'Rabbit Redux'

(1971)

• Review: 'Rabbit, Run'

(1960)

American Pastoral

Philip Roth

(1997)