• In honor of Pride and Prejudice’s two hundredth anniversary, the BBC is re-creating the Netherfield Ball at Chawton House, Hampshire. The unfortunately named Pride and Prejudice: Having A Ball at Easter, which will air on BBC 2, is for some reason ninety minutes long, and we would like an invitation.
• The Bell Jar, meanwhile, is a spring chicken at fifty.
• Philip Roth disagrees with most readers as to which of his novels are the best.
• What is the obsession with ranking things? May we rephrase? Here are a fewof America’s best bookstores.
• If Mr. Eliot had to have a day job, why is it that writers and poets today are so cagey about what they do to pay the bills? Or, as someone at a Williamsburg party once put it, “What do you do—notfor money?”