Gotta question for the hippest Japanese novelist (and memoirist) around? Log in to Time magazine's Web site, where you can ask Haruki Murakami a question and possibly read the answer in a subsequent interview. Be careful what you ask for. Your question will be posted underneath the submission form after you enter it, along with your name and location.

So what does America want to know about Mr. Murakami? Here are some gems:

Posted by Kwok Sing in Amsterdam:

In stories like ‘Slow Boat to China’ or in your novel ‘wind up bird’, you are cautiously tackling the problematic relationship between Japan and China which of course is shaped by the historical events in the 20th century.  read more »

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There's a myth among book publicists that if a title gets coverage before it hits stores then the press has been wasted. This is an absurd notion, not only because advance press can stir anticipation but because these days, people just go online after they read about a thing and preorder it on Amazon.

Kudos, in light of the conventional wisdom, to Doubleday's Alison Rich, who has managed to place not one but two major pre-pub features—one in The Wall Street Journal on June 20, the other in this morning's USA Today—about Andrew Davidson's historical thriller The Gargoyle. It's a coup, really, to have two pieces like this comparing the thing to The Da Vinci Code and asking whether it will be a massive best seller, and it'll be interesting to see whether it becomes one as a result.  read more »

The NYPD will oversee security at the new World Trade Center, as the city and the Port Authority have reached an agreement on the structure of a security plan at the 16-acre site.

The agreement, announced today, leaves NYPD in charge of security at the vast majority of the site, a role the Port Authority Police Department currently has (the move has angered members of the Port Authority police). The Port Authority would control security at the PATH hub at the site, but the NYPD would have access to that space, according to a memorandum of understanding between the city and the Port Authority made public today.  read more »

On Tuesday, Vanity Fair's Power & Politics blog posted a satire of The New Yorker's now legendary Barry Blitt cover of Barack and Michelle Obama as flag-burning, Osama bin Laden-honoring terrorists. In VF's version, drawn by illustrator Tim Bower, John and Cindy McCain are portrayed as their own worst caricatures: The presumptive Republican nominee for president is seen hunched over a walker, while his wife is juggling various prescription pills. On the wall is a painting of George W. Bush; in the fireplace, the Constitution.

But to several commenters—you know, those scourges of civilization—on VF.com, the cartoon was a little too similar to one by The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's David Horsey that ran a week earlier. In it, the McCain's appear on the cover of The National Review, he's drooling in a wheelchair (mumbling to himself, "Bomb, bomb, bomb—bomb, bomb Iran"), she's pouring prescription pills into her hand. On the wall is a painting of Dick Cheney; in the fireplace, the Constitution.  read more »

If you’re strolling through Rumsey Playfield in Central Park between Oct. 20 and Nov. 9, and you stumble across a grounded UFO, don’t panic. It was sent by Chanel (not the Sci-fi Channel) as a nomadic exhibition of artistic interpretations on its classic 2.55 quilted-style handbag, named not for its price but for its debut month of February 1955. Coming off stops in Hong Kong and Tokyo, the 7,500-square-foot space donut will round up its voyage in London, Moscow and Paris.

The pieces inside the mobile museum come from origins as international as the trip’s itinerary. The Russian arts collective Blue Noses submitted a collection of boxes with a series of satirical handbag videos called “Fifty Years After Our Common Era or Handbags Revolt.  read more »

Jim Romenesko posted the above photograph of a Sam Zell-themed cake served up by employees at the Tribune Company's Hartford Courant. As Mr. Romenesko wrote, "A Courant staffer couldn't resist poking Zell's eyes out—on the cake, of course."

Mmmm. Revenge has never tasted so ... bitter.

The McCain campaign just released another statement taking issue with what they argue is the presumptuousness of Obama's speech in Berlin today:

"While Barack Obama took a premature victory lap today in the heart of Berlin, proclaiming himself a 'citizen of the world,' John McCain continued to make his case to the American citizens who will decide this election," McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said in a statement. "Barack Obama offered eloquent praise for this country, but the contrast is clear. John McCain has dedicated his life to serving, improving and protecting America. Barack Obama spent an afternoon talking about it."  read more »

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Remember that scene in Annie Hall where some blowhard is standing in line for movie tickets and loudly saying things about Marshall McLuhan? And then McLuhan himself shows up and tells him he doesn’t know what he’s talking about?

Literary critic James Wood kind of did that last night with an item on New York magazine’s Vulture blog. The item was based on a piece in yesterday’s Observer that asked whether Wood’s criticism—which we said has always been "uncommonly and unapologetically prescriptive"—was influencing aspiring writers.  read more »

Vulture briefly summarized our piece, referring at the top to Wood’s new

One of Christine Quinn’s spokesman has taken a leave of absence and is now the interim director of communications for Democrat Mike McMahon’s Congressional campaign.

The spokesman, Anthony Hogrebe, was listed as the contact on a campaign press release announcing that McMahon has been endorsed by the United Federation of Teachers, which, according to the release, has 12,000 members in the district. McMahon is seeking to win the seat currently occupied by Vito Fossella, who is not running for reelection.

In a public statement, UFT's president, Randi Weingarten, said McMahon "is a champion for children and working people."

Before joining Quinn’s operation, Hogrebe worked on Gifford Miller’s 2005 mayoral campaign.

In other Quinn staffing news, her chief of staff, Maura Keaney, is expected to return from maternity leave in early September, according to another Quinn spokesman.

After Der Spiegel reported that Barack Obama canceled a trip to visit injured American troops in Germany, campaign spokesman Robert Gibbs said it would have been inappropriate to go on a campaign-funded trip.

Not surprisingly, the McCain campaign does not agree.

“Barack Obama is wrong," said McCain spokesman Brian Rogers. "It is never ‘inappropriate’ to visit our men and women in the military.”