Jackson Pollock died on this day in 1956.

• Later today on KCRW’s Bookworm, host Michael Silverblatt talks with Stone Arabia author Dana Spiotta.

• If you don’t know what it’s like to live and write in New York, here is a decent example: Jennifer Gilmore writes out of a closet with a window.  (She also has her dogs ashes and a rolodex.)

• It’s the grudge match of the century:  Pride and Prejudice vs. Bridget Jones’s Diary
  

• Videos of Tom Waits going fishing with John Lurie.

• We’re in the final months of the No Child Left Behind federal education law.  So what’s next?