Alice Hoffman offers a “half-assed” apology for her Twitter ugliness, and Gawker reminds us of the time that one of Hoffman’s reviews sent Richard Ford into a fit of rage that drove him (and his wife!) to shoot up one of her books.

Salon’s Mary Elizabeth Williams puts Hoffman’s behavior into some historical context alongside other notable examples of authors coming unhinged over reviews.

Meanwhile, if you want to see a similar trainwreck unfolding before your very eyes, check out Alain de Botton gettin’ all up in Caleb Crain’s comments thread at Steamboats over Crain’s review of de Botton’s Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (“I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make.”).

Slate’s Kate Bolick examines Italy’s first wave of avant-garde as the Futurist movement celebrates its 100th anniversary.

PW reports that publishers are making moves to capitalize on Michael Jackson’s death—but with little luck so far.

Sometimes the headline says it all: Michael Bay Adapting New James Frey Book.

Kate Gosselin’s food book put “on the back burner” (get it?) as publisher fears it will take more than 15 minutes to get it to stores.

Nicholas Lezard (wryly) congratulates The Kindly One author Jonathan Littellfor shunning the public eye.

Poet and essayist Katha Pollott shares five of her poetry picks…

…Also check out her essay “Poetry: Not Dead Yet”.

Congratulations to Karla Morton on being named the 2010 Texas poet laureate.

Michael Moorcock shares his memories of London.

Mark Gattis takes a trip back through time to celebrate the Dr. Who books.

Today in Literature: On this day in 1936, Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind was published.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 7:32 am and is filed under *William's Posts, Morning LitLinks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.