The Chronicle takes a look at the life of Goethe, while The Independent takes down Don DeLillo's Falling Man, sharing my misgivings about the last few DeLillo novels I've read:

Then there's the dialogue. At some point since Underworld, and indeed for large stretches of that, DeLillo's characters started to speak like characters in a Don DeLillo novel, ie like no one else on earth. The effect is carried to extremes here, with almost every character disgorging stale profundities in what sounds like a comedy Mitteleuropean accent. "To feel dangerously alive, this was a quality you associated with your father," says Leanne's mother. "Wood and graphite. Materials from the earth. We respect this about a pencil," Leanne controversially informs her son. So it goes on.

Salon reviews Don DeLillo's 9/11 novel, Falling Man.

* Instead of approaching the attack on the World Trade Center through parable, like Mr. Roth, or analogy, like Mr. Rushdie, or phantasmagoria, like Mr. Pynchon, Mr. DeLillo confronts it head-on, with graphic realism. The New York Sun reviews Falling Man, DeLillo's 9/11 novel, which I think we'll be hearing a lot about. (via A&L Daily)

* This very short article gestures towards the possible origin of symbolic language in ape communication. (via Bookninja)

* "2BR02B," an unanthologized story by Kurt Vonnegut, has found its way to Project Gutenberg. (Via MeFi)

* The Kugelmass Episodes has an interesting post up about contemporary problems in radicalization that will also help you catch up on all the big blog brouhaha surrounding Žižek and 300.

* In space, nobody can hear you scream: coping with sex and death on long space missions. (Via Gravity Lens)

* And just in case you've got work to do, Slither should nicely fill your time.