An afternoon roundup …

… courtesy of Rus Bowden:



… Call Me Burroughs: A Life — The Barnes & Noble Review.

Don't turn to Call Me Burroughs for a critical reading of Burroughs's books. There is enough of that, anyway. This is a "Candid Camera" of Burroughs's peregrinations from his silver-spoon childhood in St. Louis to his final days back in the Midwest. Miles will get into Burroughs's head, but he is invited in by Burroughs's words and doesn't presume postmortem psychoanalysis. Burroughs also left a handy paper trail, and when that wasn't available, his wake of mayhem made it easy to track his movements. 

… Virtual travel: Kerouac's On the Road followed on the road via Google Maps.



… Biggest rises and falls in the 2014 World Press Freedom Index.



I see the U.S. has dropped from 32 to 46. I fear the media has aided and abetted the change.



… George Herbert: the man who converted me from atheism.

The poems are, in effect, a spiritual autobiography. Although they are not individually dated and so cannot be directly related to different phases of Herbert's life, many of them clearly describe his intensely personal struggles with faith and calling. Even those that are more formal explorations of particular religious doctrines or concepts have a similar air of spiritual authenticity. There are no mere statements of dogma. The poems record the poet's own doubts and faith in a way that still rings true with many readers, even those with no explicit faith of their own.

… Bird Thou Never Wert: ‘Holding On Upside Down,’ a Biography of Marianne Moore.

To read Moore now is to find what wasn’t obvious before: her joy in vernacular language (“plain American which dogs and cats can read”); her emotional candor, oblique but true; her principled commitment to all liberations, with a bias toward the freedom in self-restraint.