The Problem With the Argument That We’re Hard-Wired to Be Promiscuous

“[The] basic logic is that … human beings are not naturally monogamous but rather have been explicitly designed by natural selection to seek out ‘extra-pair copulatory partners’.” The difficulty “is simply the fact that we’ve evolved to empathize with other people’s suffering, including the suffering of the people we’d betray by putting our affable genitals to their evolved promiscuous use.”

Playboy Publishes Madame Bovary (Seriously)

The September 2010 issue includes a chapter from the new translation by Lydia Davis. “You can see that Playboy is hoping to lure readers by touting Bovary as ‘The Most Scandalous Novel of All Time.’ … [Yet,] though Madame Bovary was truly scandalous when it was released, it cannot shock now, in part due to Playboy and its role in, shall we say, defining deviancy downward; and in part due to Bovary itself.”

Lit Agent Wylie Backs Down On Selling Modern Classics On New Digital Imprint

“Last month literary agent Andrew Wylie shocked the books world when he announced that he would be selling 20 modern classics – including Hunter S Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint – exclusively through Amazon.com’s Kindle store, bypassing the books’ traditional publishers as well as other booksellers.”