The Vampiric Lord Byron and Other Monsters

Lord Bryon, monstrous as a man, sure. But was he or was he not a vampire? An important question, not precisely answered in this piece from Carrie Frye over at The Awl.

Sam Anderson, one of my favourite professional noticers, profiled Anne Carson in the New York Times Magazine this weekend. Here at home, National Post poetry critic Michael Lista had not much nice to say about her highly anticipated latest, Red Doc>, though they both agree it's not precisely poetry. Here's Anderson: “The book is subtitled 'A Novel in Verse,' but — as usual with Carson — neither 'novel' nor 'verse' quite seems to apply.”

This article, about how John Belushi might inadvertantly be the key to understanding the liberties that the esteemed political journalist Bob Woodward has taken over the years, is a thrilling and instructive read. Over at Melville House, Dennis Johnson collects other nails in the coffin housingWoodwards's reputation as a man in pursuit of the truth.

And, this "isn't how rape trials ought to be discussed by professional journalists," Mallory Ortberg writes at Gawker. "Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond are not the 'stars' of the Steubenville rape trial."