The college football schedule is finally starting to get interesting, so I understand if you ignore my advice and just post up on your couch eating Funyuns. If you are looking for a slightly more refined weekend experience though, may I suggest the following:

• Check out these amazing illustrations Salvador Dali drew for Don Quixote. The man’s work was so much more than melting clocks. [h/t to the Prufrock Newsletter]
• Over at Slate, read Joseph Thomas’ account of trying to get the estate of Shel Silverstein to allow him to quote from the author’s works. This is something Ryan and I both know a bit about, as I published a piece on the lengths J.D. Salinger went to guard his personal letters from Ian Hamilton, and Ryan had the misfortune of trying to convince Sylvia Plath’s gatekeepers that a dissertation did not represent a market threat. Godspeed, Prof. Thomas.
• Jordan Conn wrote a great piece at Grantland about how Oakland looks poised to lose all of its professional sports teams within the next decade. The article ends up being a profile of one of the more unique (for better and for worse) American cities in a time of simultaneous crisis and rebirth.
• The always insightful Alan Jacobs has a great (and longish) review essay up at Books & Culture about Thomas Pynchon’s new novel, Bleeding Edge. Jacobs is a serious and generous critic, and while I don’t share his religious beliefs or politics, I appreciate that he spends so much of his time writing for non-academic audiences. More professors need to look outside the tower every now and then.
• This is (another) shameless plug, but you should check out the Book Review section over at The Los Angeles Review, where I serve as Assistant Book Reviews Editor.
• And, this [h/t Adam Ted Jacobson, via Gawker]: