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When The Counselor (trailer here) opens in theaters this month, the occasion will mark a career milestone for Cormac McCarthy. The 80-year-old novelist has been writing original screenplays since the 1970s, but only one of them – a made-for-TV movie called The Gardener’s Son – was produced before this latest effort. Over at The Wall Street Journal, Alexandra Alter takes a look at the author’s involvement in the production of The Counselor, as well as its reception by several film industry insiders and devout McCarthy fans. ("McCarthy writing a sex scene is maybe not a great idea," one of them says.)

"I slumped into an empty corner opposite Say Goodbye, Cattullus and wept into my knees for a half hour." Catherine Lacey writes for The Paris Review's "Revisited" series, "in which writers look back on a work of art they first encountered long ago." Pair with our own Bill Morris's consideration of artists whose works channel writers.

Surely you’ve heard the hype by now. Surely you’ve seen someone blushing and shifting their eyes askance while reading this book in public. Well, now you can get a taste of what the fuss is all about. You can read the beginning of Alissa Nutting’s Tampa courtesy of Dzanc Books and The Collagist.