This morning, esteemed bus terminal periodical USA Today reported stunning news: Author Cormac McCarthy had died suddenly at the age of 82. The news was posted to the paper’s Twitter account in a tweet that has since been deleted because Cormac McCarthy is not actually dead—he was only pronounced so by an Italian prankster who has made it his life’s mission to exploit the burden of efficiency that weighs on journalists everywhere.

Novelist William Giraldi wants you to know he would appreciate it very much if everyone would stop comparing him so much to Cormac McCarthy. Such a burden, to be ceaselessly compared to Cormac McCarthy, just because Giraldi, like Cormac McCarthy, is interested in the "primitive flux and flex of violence."

Aliens. Spacealiens. No such thing. How theyd fought it out, cosmic mysteries reduced to raw shouting in the uncaring morning. Her leaving in wrath and now returning, straight into the bedroom without him. Rustling and thumps.

Your book club is so gay! That's what the Scorpions, a group of hard 20 and 30-something guys who meet for PBRs in Boston shitholes to talk about books, say. Their motto? "We read. We bleed. And we kick ass."

Post gossip great-aunt Cindy Adams got the fresh dirt from Hollywood mega-producer Scott Rudin as to how, exactly, that crazy Oscar-nommed "No Country For Old Men" came to be. "Look, you never know when something great's going to come through the transom. I do movies, plays. I'm always looking. My office covers lots of material. I have people who read books and manuscripts all the time. There was no great aha! moment. This didn't come by wrapped in a big pink ribbon and ushered through with great fanfare from some superimportant VIP with a 'must read' sticker on it. The thing came to us simply. As an unpublished manuscript." Yes. A real Hollywood fairytale, optioning novels by world famous, award-winning, ICM-managed authors is. Then Rudin took a chance on a couple of complete unknowns from far away Minnesota named Joel and Ethan Coen, and the rest is history. (After the jump, for kicks, the Hollywood Reporter story announcing the NCFOM deal.) [NYP]

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