Contact The Editor
Articles By This Author
•
The 1,496-page German novel "Bottom's Dream," translated into (broken) English, more than twice as long as "War and Peace," recently reached U.S. bookstores as a 13-pound behemoth, bound with a 14-inch spine that, based on a September Wall Street Journal description, will almost surely go unread. The story follows two translators and their teenage daughter over a single day as they try to interpret the works of Edgar Allen Poe, making for slow going for anyone not already conversant with Poe. [Wall Street Journal]
• Gary Medrow has periodically surfaced in News of the Weird since 1991 for his unique behavior of using a false identity to persuade Milwaukee-area strangers over the phone to lift other strangers off the ground -- behavior for which he has occasionally been jailed and ordered to psychiatric care. After a recent period of calm, Medrow slipped and was charged with impersonating a photojournalist to convince two Cedarburg (Wisconsin) High School students to hoist each other on their shoulders. At an earlier hearing, Medrow said that his "addiction" helps him to relieve tension and anxiety. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]