Literary doping: the secret source of writers’ productivity
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde “in six days and six nights on a cocaine binge,” and Edgar Allan Poe binge-drank even though a single glass of wine transformed him into a madman. For Stephen King, it was cocaine; for Burroughs, heroin; for Bukowski, booze. Now Alex Beam accuses some [...]
Writing for pay
Chris Dolan enumerates the many temptations for the fiction writer of freelance work that seems connected to creative writing, but actually is (as he sees it) a big boondoggle:
First, there’s teaching. Workshops, writers’ groups, readers’ groups, school visits. Film workshops, theatre discussion groups, poetry seminars. They don’t pay much, but one or two a week [...]
“Sing in me, muse, and through me tell the story”
To mark the end of the Olympics in Greece, BBC Radio4 dramatized The Odyssey in three parts over the weekend.
Fans of Homer’s classical epic can test their knowledge with this (somewhat plodding) text-based adventure game, in which they can choose to play Odysseus, his son, or his wife.
Remainders
Graham Greene on writing: “‘Perhaps it is only in childhood . . . that books have any deep influence on our lives. In later life we admire, we are entertained, we may modify some views . . . but we are more likely to find in books merely a confirmation of what is in [...]
Please God, I don’t care about the rest of it, but don’t let them cast Gwyneth Paltrow as Nicole
Publishers Marketplace reports that film rights to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night were sold this week to Twentieth Century Fox, “in a major deal for seven figures.”
In his notebooks, Fitzgerald said of the novel:
Tender is less interesting toward the climax because of the absence of conversation. They eye flies for it and [...]
Something to believe in
Opinion by Sean Carman
I have no reason to know this, but I suspect Heidi Julavits turned out her essay in the inaugural issue of The Believer satisfied she had produced a fine and true thing in the world, only to watch in horror as it was widely misunderstood. I say this so late in [...]
In which others opine
In my ongoing quest to entice others to do the hard stuff (i.e., think) for me, I’ve created a new category, “Guest Opinions,” in which I’ll feature short, provocative guest postings on various literary topics.
I’ll be posting the first two together this afternoon because they are — quite by accident — complementary and [...]
The Smart Set: Lauren Cerand’s Weekly Events
MONDAY, 8.30: Which magazine editor would you most like to tell you a story? Bum you a cigarette? Harper’s head Lewis Lapham might well do both when he joins the Moth for a special event, entitled “Listen Up: Stories of Squeaky Wheels,” as part of the Imagine ‘04 festival of “arts, issues, and ideas” — [...]
Titties that think*
Topless models’ breasts now have right-wing political opinions in Rupert Murdoch’s U.K. Sun. A Boing Boing reader reports:
In the UK, Rupert Murdoch’s “The Sun” tabloid — famous for its topless models on Page 3 — has decided that merely displaying a couple of boobs to increase circulation is not enough. Now, accompanying the lady proudly [...]
Ali Smith on A.L. Kennedy
In the weekend’s Guardian, Ali Smith reviews A.L. Kennedy’s latest novel, Paradise, characterizing it as “a symbolic narrative that powers itself on despair and self-hurt – so far, so vintage Kennedy.” Yet she concludes that Paradise, with its “sustained and soaring self-parody, the double-voiced, double-edged bluff in the conjunction of funny and sad, hopeless and [...]
Protesty
The Maud household, and most of the Brooklyn neighborhood in which the Maud household is situated, were protesting this weekend.
For photos you may not have seen, go here.
For a somewhat related song on which the voices of all (non-feline) members of the Maud household appear (and which has been played on [...]
Remainders
Jonathan Yardley calls Mark Edmundson’s Why Read? “an encomium to literature and reading, a passionate argument that literature ‘is the major cultural source of vital options for those who find that their lives fall short of their highest hopes,’ and that ‘the purpose of a liberal arts education is to give people an enhanced opportunity [...]
McGrath review may have given me a rash
Speaking of closing-down and boxing-in, on Monday when I read Charles McGrath’s slightly incoherent and somewhat passive aggressive review of The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, I got all riled up. I’m a little calmer now, or maybe I’m tired. Five days in which you have undergone a uterine biopsy and the development [...]
Murakami Interview
I just picked up a copy of The Paris Review yesterday. The interview with Haruki Murakami alone is well worth the 16 bucks Canadian. I was particularly interested in his response to a question about why he doesn’t do reviews or critiques. He said:
I think that my job is to observe people and the [...]
Another Alice
Young actress Dakota Fanning may be starring in adaptations of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. She’s grinning widely in many of her publicity shots but she is capable of a certain intense, scowly seriousness that might work well for Alice. The scary news, though, is that the deal is with Steven Spielberg’s [...]
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