As a general rule, I hate movie scenes that take place in the rain. Not necessarily because of the rain itself, but because whenever you see rain you know someone is sad, or in love, or sadly in love, or dying. I believe in the human capacity for imagination, and that we haven't come up with a better device to show melancholy or romance than some storm clouds and a light drizzle, kinda pisses me off.

"How much of this book is about your own life?" All novelists, even those who write about horny Centaurs or plasma cannons, have to come up with a standard response to that prickly, earnest question. As someone who has been accused of navel-gazing on the Internet, who has written a few personal essays and now has published a novel in which the protagonist shares many of the same biographical details as the author, I have certainly come to expect it.

Talk about noticing things tardily—but look how gorgeous the Esquire page design and illustration was in 1960! Holy mackerel. I would buy the holy hell out of that magazine. (Except the Gawker 1960 version would probably be all like, "Oh my God, who is this tired James Baldwin, selling out Harlem to the gentrifiers? And what is with all this white space? OMG, 'white space,' get it?" Sigh.) [Esquire.com]