The Smart Set is a weekly feature, compiled by Lauren Cerand, that appears Mondays and highlights the best of the week to come. Special favor is given to New York’s independent booksellers and venues, and low-cost and free events. Please submit details to lauren@maudnewton.com. The “Going Coastal” Edition: This week, the itinerary is split between New York and Los Angeles . . .
Ricky Gervais, star of The Office (the funniest TV show of all time), appeared on Letterman recently to discuss his new children’s book, Flanimals. (One of the little critters — flanimals, I mean, not children — is pictured at right.) Gervais admitted to tracking the book’s success on Amazon. Noticing that Flanimals was rated less than five stars overall, he . . .
Giles Coren, inspired by recent census revelations about some of Britain’s most venerated literary figures, envisions a journal entry in which Charles Dickens castigates himself for approaching the task of falsifying census data as he would writing a novel: Monday last … Mrs Dustanpolish, my housekeeper, animadverted me to the presence at my domiciliary portals of the census-takers, Pencilpush and . . .
In an interview with her brother, British rapper Doc Brown, Zadie Smith reflects on the difference between writing and rapping in the first person: ZS: The reason I could never be in that business is that you always have to speak in the first person. I find it a really strange experience to say “I” all the time. BS: Yeah. . . .
In a review of the sequel to Get Shorty, Kurt Loder says the “only really interesting thing about this boneheaded film version of Elmore Leonard’s 1999 best-seller is how flagrantly it trashes the book, and its resultantly flamboyant incoherence.” Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness inspired Coppola’s outstanding Apocalypse Now, but it nearly spawned another adaptation years earlier. For his first . . .