Yes, let’s start with this.

1. I rolled my eyes when I saw Jonathan Franzen’s Time cover — not because his fame founded from a minor tiff with Oprah; not because his reputation is predominantly based upon a single novel that I think is overrated. (No, I didn’t like The Corrections, but I understand why other people do.) It’s not even that there are other authors who I feel deserve the honor more. Everyone has their favorites, and Franzen has both commercial and critical cache.

No, I rolled my eyes because Time felt the need to pair Franzen with the words “great American novelist.” I don’t question that Franzen is a novelist and American, and there are many people who are smarter than me that think he’s great. But the words have a ring of exclusivity.

The title seems, at least, premature. Steinbeck, Melville and Hawthorne are great American novelists. Mailer and Updike are great American novelists. So are Toni Morrison and Philip Roth.

I just don’t feel like Franzen has earned what these names have earned. (Let me be clear. I’m not accusing Franzen of hubris. I have no reason to think he suggested the cover head.) Maybe Freedom will blow me away, and I’ll have to retract my statement. Maybe I will be embarrassed for ever doubting him. But, right now, he is a man with some momentum. Let’s see if he can sustain it before we coronate him.

Franzen’s cover shot is also a big deal because Time has not put a writer on its front since Stephen King 10 years ago. (That fact is a bit misleading. Harry Potter appeared on the cover more recently for a story that was mostly about J.K. Rowling.)

The Millions has written a detailed history of the many writers who have appeared on the cover of Times.

2. Norman Mailer once claimed that God told him to walk out on an all-night diner’s check in 2007.

“It was God’s amusement to say, ‘You little prig. Just walk out of there. Don’t pay for the coffee. They’ll survive, and this’ll be good for you,’” he said.

This and some of the other worst divine-advice excuses are compiled in this Salon slide show.

3. What is most disappointing? That they are making a movie of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road?

That they are filming this crucially American story in Montreal? (I mean stateside America. Obviously, Montreal is in America.)

Or that the cast includes Kristen Stewart?

4. Alice Walker on the segregation of African-American authors:

In my passion to locate more books by writers from other cultures I took a turn around the Kindle and Amazon sites, to discover something that seems truly amazing: books by black authors are segregated by race! This would be hilarious if it were not so troubling. If, after all of our struggle to integrate into this questionable system we may enter a bookstore and stand anywhere, but our books must reside in a corner, the world has not changed nearly as much as I, for one, assumed it had.

There are writers from Iran, Japan, Ireland, England, India, China, Israel, Korea, Tibet etc., all listed and shown to be writers of Literature. But when looking for my own novel (which world wide has sold perhaps fifteen million copies) I found it tucked away with twelve or so books by other African Americans under African American Literature. To make matters worse, no one had bothered to read the book to verify the narrative. A synopsis has the main character raped by her father rather than by her stepfather (her father was lynched when she was an infant) a point that is crucial to comprehending the dynamics of the heroine’s rise from disaster.

My family didn’t celebrate Easter because my mom said it had its origins in a pagan fertility ritual. (Why do you think people dye eggs?)

Ishtar may have flopped in the Lea household, but it’s still going to be a Good Friday. Inhale the melange.

Craig Teicher addresses the relevancy of poetry from the perspective of critic.

But in almost any conversation on the topic of poetry reviews, one question comes up: what’s the point? This question isn’t always asked with the flippant air that actually means “who cares?” Often, people really want to know: what is accomplished by poetry reviews? Do they help sell books? Do they keep the art form in line? Do they spur writers into creating better poetry or kick bad writers out of the halls of Parnassus? Do poetry reviews help readers?

There is talk of keeping poetry “vital” and “alive,” but the article does not eulogize the art form or devolve into cliché.

In what can only be considered the greatest news of all time, Margaret Atwood is on Twitter. Even better, she’s blogging about being on Twitter.

She says having a Twitter feed is like having “33,000 precocious grandchildren.”

They really shone when, during the Olympics, I said that “Own the podium” was too brash to be Canadian, and suggested “A podium might be nice.” Their own variations poured onto a feed tagged #cpodium: “A podium! For me?” “Rent the podium, see if we like it.” “Mind if I squeeze by you to get onto that podium?”

My first thought reading her blog was, “Margaret Atwood would be the coolest grandma ever.” But I didn’t want to say that in fear it would be perceived as sexist or ageist. Then, Atwood called us precocious grandchildren and removed any possible awkwardness... just like a cool grandma.

(Atwood tweets. Alice Walker blogs. It is a wonderful time to love the typed word.)

Jan Freeman talks about banned words in newswriting and the repetition inherent in the business.

The call for “fresh language” is another cliché that demands a closer look. Sometimes repetition and formulaic language serve a speaker’s purpose better than novelty; sometimes the story really is the same — only the names have changed — and too much striving for originality may annoy and distract.

Finally, because it can’t be all good news, I offer two more reasons one might hate Amazon.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com