TV's long-running prime-time cartoon "The Simpsons" likes to portray itself as low brow, when of course it's nothing of the sort -- despite Homer's regular genuflection to Duff beer and cheeseburgers.
Some proof of that comes this Sunday (Fox Channel 25, 8 p.m.) when the show, which often features the voices and cartoon likenesses of pop culture icons, welcomes authors Gore Vidal, Michael Chabon, and Jonathan Franzen, Globe TV critic Matthew Gilbert tells us.

The publicity-avoiding Thomas Pynchon has also been on the show repeatedly -- with a paper bag over his head, of course.

SUNDAY: Dale Peterson discusses “Jane Goodall,” at 3 p.m., at the Concord Bookshop, 65 Main St., Concord … Kitty Dukakis and Larry Tye discuss “Shock: The Healing Power of Electroconvulsive Therapy,” at 7 p.m., at Temple Emanuel, 7 Haggetts Pond Rd., Andover … James D. Hornfischer discusses “Ship of Ghosts,” at 1 p.m., at the Harvard Square Coop, 1400 Mass. Ave., Cambridge … Children’s author Yetti Frankel reads at 1:30 p.m., at Book Ends, 559 Main St., Winchester.

MONDAY: Bill Morgan discusses “I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg,” at 6:30 p.m., at the Harvard Bookstore, 1256 Mass. Ave., Cambridge … Tina Cassidy discusses “Birth,” at 7 p.m., at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St., Brookline … Charles Pierce discusses “Moving the Chains,” at 7:30 p.m., at the Newton Free Library, 339 Homer St., Newton … Poets Judith Harris and Jeffrey Harrison read at 4 p.m., at the UMass-Boston Bookstore, 100 Morrissey Blvd. … Kelly Gallagher discusses “China Shifts Gears,” at 7 p.m., at the Harvard Square Coop … Contributors to “Why I’m Still Married” speak at 7:30 p.m., at the Leventhal-Sidman Jewish Community Center, 333 Nahanton St., Newton; for ticket information ($7.50), call 617-965-5226.

TUESDAY: William S. McFeely discusses “Portrait: A Life of Thomas Eakins,” at 6:30 p.m., a the Harvard Book Store … Lisa Moore reads from “Alligator,” at 7:30 p.m., at Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut St., Newtonville … Travis Bradford discusses “Solar Revolution,” at 7 p.m., at the Harvard Square Coop.

(Happy Thanksgiving.)

FRIDAY: Amir Aczel discusses “The Artist and the Mathematician,” at 7 p.m., at the Harvard Square Coop … Poet Regie Gibson reads at 7 p.m., at Jamaicaway Books, 676 Centre St., Jamaica Plain ($5).

SATURDAY: Anthony M. Sammarco discusses “South Boston Then and Now,” at 2 p.m., at the South Boston Branch Library, 646 East Broadway.

Announcements must arrive at globebookmaking@hotmail.com two weeks
before publication date. Events are subject to change.

About the scheme by publisher Judith Regan to publish O.J. Simpson's "hypothetical" confession, entitled "If I Did It," after displaying the sniveling wretch on Fox TV and taking orders from now-disgusted booksellers without telling them the content of the book: All I can think is that this makes the hardest of hardcore porn seems like "It's a Wonderful Life." Even Patricia Schroeder, president of the American Association of Publishers, who knows that business is business, called it "sickening."

For some people, there's no bottom but the line.

The new issue of the poetry journal New American Writing features an interview with Nathaniel Mackey, winner of a National Book Award this week for "Splay Anthem.'' The interview isn't online but you can read his poem, "Song of the Andoumboulou: 52.''

"Song of the Andoumboulou" is one of two ongoing serial poems woven together in "Splay Anthem." The poem is derived from the cosmology of the Dogon of West Africa. The song of the Andoumboulou is both a funeral song and a song of rebirth.

The literary establishment is safe for another day. Mark Danielewski did not win the National Book Award last night for his experimental novel "Only Revolutions" (earlier discussion below). Instead, Richard Powers took top honors for "The Echo Maker." Here's a complete list of who won what.

Devoted fans of writer Thomas Pynchon (you know who you are) are counting down the hours to Tuesday's release of "Against the Day," the master's first novel in nine years. His acolytes are already poised to wade into the book's 1,085 pages and myriad plot lines, set in the decades around 1900.

Early trade reviews suggest a book that's not Pynchon's best, but better than his recent efforts, and almost always entertaining. Check out the Globe's review this Sunday, and you'll be able to join a fan discussion group on boston.com, if you're of a mind. After all, it's easier to be a fellow traveler if you travel with other fellows.

Law professor Sanford Levinson's smart and readable new book, "Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Correct it)", has drawn much critical attention, pro and con. Levinson complains that it takes much too long to enact laws under our bicameral legislative system, and he is particularly critical of Section 3, Clause 1, the equal representation of the states in the U.S. Senate. It's "a travesty of the democratic ideal," he grumbles, and "should appall most Americans" because it give states with small populations voting power equal to large states.

Levinson says the only reason for Clause 1 was to get the small states to ratify the constitution. But the other salient fact, easily forgotten in today's nationalized sensibility, is that our country is a federation of states, not just voters. As the constitution is written, states have rights. We might deplore that, and many people do (just as they deplore the Electoral College), but my hunch is that we tinker with it at our peril.

One of the curious things about the United States is that, although it has a capital city, it doesn't have a political center. In most countries, there's the center -- London, Paris, Moscow -- and then there are the boonies, which can usually be exploited or ignored. This sense of exploitation of the back-country can lead to bitter grievance, or even breakups, as it did in the former Czechoslovakia, or it can let the outlands rot with no attention or development. But that doesn't happen here. Alaska and Wyoming -- and Rhode Island, for that matter -- can't be ignored by New York, Illinois, or California, because the country can't function without them. That may be undemocratic, but it may also be one reason the country has held together for so long.

Worldchanging, among the most popular environmental blogs, has just come out with a book, "Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century.''

In the blogosphere, the fact that Al Gore wrote the forward is being hotly debated. Does that lend credibility to the book or does it, as one blogger suggests, show that the authors are as "vain, flaky and shallow as Gore himself.''

Move on, say admirers of the book who are calling it the new Whole Earth Catalog.

Henry Louis Gates Jr., the head of Harvard's African-American studies department, is always provocative. Now he's out with "The Annotated Uncle Tom's Cabin.''

In a wide-ranging interview published Sunday in the Globe, he offers opinions on a host of black figures from the past, including James Baldwin and Stokely Carmichael. He said Stokely and others used "Uncle Tom'' as a metaphor for Martin Luther King Jr. Gates said, "King, they thought, was the long suffering, too Christian person leading the movement astray.''

Gates has been at Harvard for 15 years, and I was looking forward to finally hearing him, but this morning he apparently canceled his scheduled reading tonight in Harvard Square. Oh well, more time to read.

Book-subjects seem to have runs of popularity, and recently we've seen two eminent writers tilting at God, or the belief therein. Last winter there was "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon," by Tufts philosopher Daniel C. Dennett. Last month there was "The God Delusion," a more overt shot at the idea of God, by British biologist Richard Dawkins.

What sounds like possibly the most full-throated rejection of religon in recent times, "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything," is due next May from freelance journalist Christopher Hitchens. Everything? Really?

We're told by the spring catalog copy of Twelve, the new imprint of former Random House editor-in-chief Jonathan Karp at Warner Books, a division of Hachette, that the author will take what is obviously a completely original tack: "Hitchens frames the argument for a more secular life based on science and reason."

This is a subject that can't fail to attract interest from reviewers. Dennett was pummeled by Leon Wieseltier in the New York Times Book Review (and gave it back in full measure, in a letter), while Dawkins gets it in the neck -- "Hysterical Scientism" -- from Marilynne Robinson in the current Harper's magazine. Hitchens has a way of going after sacred cows, such as Mother Teresa ("The Missionary Position"), and here he decides to aim for the top. He's sure to get a reviewer worthy of his stature. Maybe it will be an entirely positive review, but we suspect Hitchens would find that somehow disappointing.

Perhaps Pope Benedict XV, not shy of controversy, will have a go.

The National Books Awards come out tomorrow night. To my mind, the most intriguing title among the five fiction nominees is "Only Revolutions" by Mark Z. Danielewski (Pantheon, 360 pp., $26). It's not that Danielewski's novel is favored to win, or even perhaps that it should, but that it could.

Danielewski is a 40-year-old experimental novelist, intent on stretching the form. His book is an unusual lovers' tale, spanning a century, that can be read from front to back or back to front. It tells the couple's story from their individual perspectives. Simply flip the book over and start reading when you'd like the alternate view. The novel, which is printed in half a dozen type fonts, has two sets of page numbers and comes with handy marking ribbons to track the dual narratives. It also comes with historical notes in the margins, furnished by Danielewski's avid fans (who resemble Thomas Pynchon's in their ardor) through his Web network.

In other words, this is an odd duck of a book. So, if it wins, the questions will arise: What is art exactly? What is a gimmick? Where do the two meet, if it all? Personally, I think Danielewski deserves credit for creativity and dedication. But can this book, which is heavy sledding stylistically, be the best of thousands of fiction titles this year? I doubt it, but check back in 36 hours and see if a publishing revolution is storming the parapets.

Mystery lovers may want to tune in to "Murder by the Book'' tonight at 10 on Court TV. James Ellroy is the first writer invited to talk about the true crime that inspired his writing. Of course, that story is well known. It was the murder of his mother when he was 10 years old. In "My Dark Places,'' he wrote about his failed efforts to solve her murder. More famous is "Black Dahlia,'' his novel based on another real-life unsolved murder.

Subsequent weeks will feature, among others, Michael Connelly, whose "Echo Park'' is selling briskly.

What shall I do about my grandfather’s “Harvard Classics: The Five-Foot Shelf of Books”? Many times in the last few weeks, as I have written this series, I’ve climbed to the attic to ponder, handle, and consult the old red books, stored in cardboard cartons. They’re safe for now, but I don’t want to abandon them up there. The truth is, they’re in tough shape. At least two of the 50 volumes have lost their covers altogether, and the stitching of several others has broken and signatures are falling out. What to do?

One solution: replace the damaged volumes. So many hundreds of thousands of sets of “The Five-Foot Shelf” were sold, over several editions up through the 1930s, that individual books are easy to come by. Just now I checked on Abebooks.com and found Volume 27, “English Essays from Sir Philip Sidney to Macaulay,” 1910 edition, in good condition, for $3.95. I’m sure all the other volumes are available. But what would I do with Granddad’s originals? Throw them in the trash? I can’t do that.

Or, I could buy the replacements, then take the new and old copies to my friend Sam Ellenport, proprietor of Boston’s wonderful Harcourt Bindery, and have him transfer the intact covers to the old books. He could also repair the other damaged volumes.

But then, where will I put the whole set? I don’t have an open five-foot bookcase to put them on in my house, unless I get rid of a lot of my own books.

Unless … unless I’m misunderstanding the truth about John Humphreys, my grandfather, what was most important to him. What does it mean that he didn’t want to own a house because he thought it would force him to cut back on his reading? What would Granddad say about my dilemma, if I could ask him? What I imagine him saying is this: “Don’t make an idol of the ‘Five-Foot Shelf.’ Get rid of them if you must. I’m grateful for all they gave to me. But the treasure was not the books. The real treasure was the reading. Reading is what I loved most.”

If that is what he would say, then what I should do, whatever happens to the books in the end, is read them. Can I do that? Why not? There are 23,000 pages in “The Five-Foot Shelf,” but Charles William Eliot, the editor, insisted that one need only read 15 minutes a day. The main thing is to make a start.

Volume 1, “Franklin, Woolman, Penn”
“The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin”:

“Twyford, at the Bishop of St. Asaph’s, 1771
“Dear Son: I have ever had the pleasure in obtaining any little anecdotes of my ancestors. You may remember the inquiries I made about the remains of my relations when you were with me in England…. Imagining it may be equally agreeable to you to know the circumstances of my life…I sit down to write them for you….”

(End of series. Previous installments appeared Sept. 19, 26, Oct. 4, 16, 23, 30, and Nov. 7.

1. OUR 50 STATES, by Lynne Cheney
2. THE BOY OF STEEL, by Ray Negron
3. IS THERE REALLY A HUMAN RACE?, by Jamie Lee Curtis
4. LIBRARY LION, by Michelle Knudsen
5. FANCY NANCY, by Jane O’Connor

Source: NY Times