From a Slate interview with Jonathan Franzen, America’s most indubitably Franzenish novelist:

The novelist Colum McCann was reportedly beaten on Saturday night outside a New Haven hotel, according to the Associated Press. His injuries were serious enough that he was hospitalized, and is now undergoing dental work.

After retiring from writing novels in 2012, Philip Roth has felt "no desire to write fiction," he says in a new interview. Having taken up swimming, music, and appreciating nature, he has "barely time left for a continuing preoccupation with aging, writing, sex, and death." It's difficult to make room for all your hobbies.

"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.

Last week, CW reality star and Maxim UK pin-up Devorah Rose tweeted a suggestive message about Salman Rushdie. Asked about his relationship with Devorah, Rushdie told Page Six that he was "mortified" to be connected to her. When Devorah heard that, she went nuclear and gave copies of her Facebook interactions with Rushdie to several gossip outlets.

Earlier this year, supporters of labor mural-hating, child labor-loving Maine governor Paul LePage honored him by having an "Open for Business" sign installed along a highway in Kittery, on the Pine Tree state's southern border. Almost overnight, all the world's corporations except Groupon moved to Maine. But just before Memorial Day, somebody stole the sign—ruining prosperity and the holiday weekend for everyone.

Alice Hoffman, America's most hypersensitive to criticism novelist, issued a statement this afternoon after publishing Roberta Silman's phone number and calling her names on Twitter after Silman wrote a negative review of Hoffman's new book in the Boston Globe.