• Department of Amplifications: The New York Review of Books's Neal Ascherson reads New Yorker editor David Remnick's Reporting: Writing from The New Yorker and finds the author, "a strikingly cool reporter. Watchful as a novelist for significant detail, he records the words, the clothes, the furnishings, and the diet of his subjects. He is immensely well informed and, like the good foreign correspondent he was for many years, he always sets the present against the background of the recent or sometimes distant past."
• Steal this book: The Times's Charles Isherwood has some well-wrought fun with the allegations that Ian McEwan—and nearly every other writer this year—may or may not have plagiarized: "Doesn't it seem wearying, this stream of 'gotcha' stories trumpeting the news that a novelist or a lyricist or a playwright has used a few turns of phrase or the curves of somebody else's life story without proper accreditation, or with improper specificity? I half expect to read of a lawsuit brought by a journalist covering last year's plagiarism scandal against a journalist covering this year's, asserting copyright infringement." (Incidentally, we had that idea first.)
• This just in from Second Life: Adam Pasick, Reuter's bureau chief in Second Life, interviews Warner Music chief Edgar Bronfman avatar-to-avatar. While some see Second Life as an experiment in virtual existence, Bronfman sees captive consumers: "Virtual communities let us have millions of people connecting. To tap that creativity is fantastic, and we'll see it more and more."
• Dynamic duo: Christopher Buckley reviews Spy: The Funny Years in the New York Times Book Review and writes of the magazine's founders Graydon Carter and Kurt Andersen: "Carter and Andersen are referred to variously as the 'Lennon and McCartney of publishing, the Nichols and May, the Woodward and Bernstein' and for good measure, 'Mick and Keith'; O.K., O.K., we get it, you were good, you were gods..." Too bad he accidentally misspells Andersen's last name in the second to last paragraph. (And with that, Seth Mnookin's head just exploded.)
• All of us undomesticated writers eventually make their way out here to the Great Salt Lick.: The Guardian's Edward Helmore looks at an unproduced screenplay by William Faulkner about vampires. At least it wasn't a Wallace Beery wrestling picture.