From this nice little profile of Karen Russell, the Pulitzer-shortlisted author of Swamplandia!, comes this nugget. Tom Wolfe's lastest, "Back to Blood," which went with him five years ago when he left FSG, for the cost of around $7 million, has sold 62,000 copies to date. (That's according to Nielsen BookScan, which does not record sales at WalMart, Sam's Club or BJ's. Not sure how well Tom Wolfe performs at WalMart anyway though!) That's at least a hundred bucks in advance per copy sold. These things happen.

right now i am inside the restaurant Cipriani on 42nd St. in Manhattan for a gala celebrating the Norman Mailer Writers Colony and honoring some literary figures and young writers and i am standing 20 feet away from Jann Wenner, the founder and publisher of Rolling Stone Magazine, and i want to ask him some questions about the music website Pitchfork but he is talking to some other people and i don't want to interrupt him. i am standing with my friend mike who is a reporter, who brought me to this gala and who is also keeping an eye on Jann Wenner to swoop in and ask him [...]