Futureproof

It is to other blogs I direct you today. First to Ready Steady Book, who break the news, via the Associated Press, that the great American writer and essayist David Foster Wallace has committed suicide at 46. There are few contemporary writers who have consistently proved their exception talent, and even though I've not read his massive "Infinite Jest". A very sad day, a great loss.

I know Lee Rourke at Scarecrow will be shocked by the news. His comment on the Booker Prize list this year is one that I would probably echo. The judges appear to like well-written stories, preferably historical. I can't comment on the books themselves having not read any of them, but I'd agree with Lee that the prize is becoming ever more an irrelevance - if, as you'd expect, its role was to identify the best contemporary fiction.

Its only a month to the Manchester Literature Festival and as ever, I'll try and go to a thing or two, but know full well that I won't get to more than a few things. Bumping into MMU's Andrew Biswell earlier in the week, he mentioned the opening event, a poetry reading at the RNCM, including the awarding of the first Manchester Poetry Prize.