Sunday's a good day for leftovers, and that includes links I've been saving in the refrigerator but that might go bad if I keep them Tupperwared up, so I'm serving a casserole (or, as we like to say in the Midwest, hot dish) instead.

There's another nice recollection of the late New Yorker great Herbert Warren Wind, and his literary legacy, to add to the others. Art Spander writes in Scotland's Sunday Herald:

In golf, euphoria is short lived, a bad shot lurking at any moment, so there is a state of sustained melancholy, thus leading to first-rate writing, and first-rate writers.

Bernard Darwin, of course, is considered the pioneer, followed by the post-Second World War giants, Pat-Ward Thomas, Henry Longhurst and, not that long ago, Peter Dobereiner. They must be joined in fame by an American, the great Herbert Warren Wind, who has died at the age of 88.

Wind’s seminal contribution to golf journalism was the naming of Augusta National’s arrowhead of holes, the 11th green, 12th hole and 13th tee, as “Amen Corner’’ in one of his joyously rambling essays for Sports Illustrated.

That poignant description of a place where Masters tournaments have been won and lost would today be called a soundbite of distinction, but it was the body and scope of Wind’s work that is responsible for his reputation. Cont'd.

Also, for no particular reason, 100 Things to Do in Scotland Before You Die. I'm thinking of retiring in Scotland myself, as soon as possible, so this was of particular interest. I'm sure Wind himself did at least half these things.

For the growing batallion of Wilseyists, here's a light snack while you're recovering from stuffing your face with the book for ten straight hours: San Franciscans cast the movie, and a piece in the Toronto Globe & Mail by Lisa Gabriele about Sean, Dede, Pat, Al, Indira, Todd, Menachem, Trevor, and all your newfound preoccupations. It's a smart review, although I disagree somewhat with this:

Much of the writing in McSweeney's comes from creative minds who suffered childhoods likely interrupted by despairing adults and their loud concerns. And because the stories are often elliptical, code-like and steeped in trivia, they feel as though they're honed by writers who refuse to grow up, or have never learned how to, unable to let go of the coy trappings of innocence and curiosity.... Still, Wilsey's memoir carries none of the so-called "McSweeney's characteristics.'"

There's too much McSweeney's for me to make a pronouncement about all of it, but Wilsey helped form its famous tone, and his writing here fits into it well; it's wry, dry, self-deprecating, absurd, expansive, and precise. (Esquire says it well: "Oh the Glory of It All is, as the title suggests, a stuffed, hyper book, its wounds still raw and glittering.") As for trivia, I think our generation carries it for protection, as a bonding tool in the deafening midst of those very underactualized boomers Gabriele mentions. It's also a mistake to confuse the McSweeney's universe with the specific devices of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. There's more than one kind of piece in McS., in any case. Some are dead serious despite the jokes; others are just jokes. Plus, and I really did like Gabriele's review, but why are innocence and curiosity coy trappings? Surely with all the cynicism and irony we're drowing in, those are welcome antidotes. For about a billion reasons, McS. for all its winking is anti-despair and anti-ennui—just ask anyone at 826 Valencia. And they publish sestinas, for God's sake! Which I say with glee even though they nicely rejected mine, with encouragement. If you've never written one, I recommend it; it's a real kick.

And on the subject of self-involved elders, Wilsey fever aside for a moment, this is one of the best statements I've ever read: "My only regret is that he's not older than he is, since there would be more to read." That's George Saunders on Wilsey, and it's in the generous spirit of my former colleague John Leonard, who often speaks of his gratitude to people who saw his gifts and energy early and let him run with them, and who never thought of witholding that same generosity even though he long ago hit the big time. That spirit is in 826 as well, and it's absolutely right.

Here's the fearless Chris Lehmann on the class series in the Times: "Alas, however, the New York Times is in no position to deliver. In contrast to, say, the paper's conscientious reporting on the ’60s-era civil-rights movement in the South, its foray into class consciousness suffers from a fatal flaw. Social class is at the core of the Times’ institutional identity, which prevents the paper from offering the sort of dispassionate, critically searching discussion the subject demands...."

Finally, from a time when men were men and a serial comma was a serial comma:

The legendary New Yorker editor William Shawn ran his magazine through some magical blend of creative listening and inspired vision. But he was a copyeditor at heart.

Shawn once edited a piece by writer Philip Hamburger. It was late, around 10 at night. They came to the end of the piece, in which Hamburger described shaking hands with Argentina's Evita Peron and finding her hand "stone cold."

Shawn, Hamburger later wrote, "became agitated."

"Stone cold," he said, "requires a hyphen."

"I became agitated. 'Put a hyphen there and you spoil the ending,' I said. 'That hyphen would be ruinous.'

"Perhaps you had better sit outside my office and cool off," he said. "I'll go on with my other work."

"I took a seat outside his office. From time to time, he would stick his head out and say, "Have you changed your mind?

"No hyphen," I replied. "Absolutely no hyphen." I was quite worked up over the hyphen.

"Sometime around two-thirty in the morning, Shawn said, wearily, "All right. No hyphen."

"But you are wrong."

Go back to that Sunday Herald obituary for a second. I think Shawn would've hyphenated "short-lived."

Why 'copyeditor' should be one word [National Fellowship for Copy Editors]