At Variety‘s blog, news that Steven Speilberg has signed on to his next project: A remake of Harvey, the Pulitzer-winning 1944 play and beloved 1950 Jimmy Stewart movie about a man, Elwood P. Dowd, and his friendship with an invisible giant rabbit.
New Harvey
Allies Respond
Writers John Keene, Dawn Martin Lundy, and others respond to the mass shooting in Orlando. “Homophobia, transphobia, and ideologically-nurtured hatreds of all kinds, coupled with semi-automatic weapons, provide the fuel for terror, in this case literally,” says Keene.
●
●
Fresh Powder
Year in Reading alumnus (and co-founder of The Morning News) Rosecrans Baldwin talks shop with Thomas Stoeckli, a photographer from Switzerland who specializes in photos of snowboarders.
●
●
“Abroad, you could be anything”
Following the news that Beyoncé sampled a TED talk given by Year in Reading contributor Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, Tin House dug up an interview with the author, who says that to this day, when she looks at the manuscript of Americanah, she feels “thrilled and amazed that [she] actually finished writing this.”
●
●
“Pardon me, where can I purchase a camel?”
It’s easy to forget that traders and travelers a millennium ago were as tongue-tied in foreign countries as college backpackers are today. How convenient for Silk Road travels, then, to have had a phrasebook translating between languages like Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Mandarin Chinese.
An Excerpt from the New Knausgaard
Here’s one for all you Knausgaard fans: Newsday has a short excerpt from My Struggle: Book Three. (Related: if you’re not yet a Knausgaard fan, allow Jonathan Callahan to extend an invitation to the club.)
●
●
Steve Jobs Goes Graphic
Late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has been immortalized in books, documentaries, and TV specials, with rumors that his story might eventually make its way to the big screen. Now you can add graphic novel to that list; on Tuesday PC Magazine noted the release of The Zen of Steve Jobs.
●
●
Constraint-Based Poetry: Round Two
I didn’t expect to find a Chinese poem more ornate than Su Hui’s palindromic, pre-oulipan “Xuanji Tu,” but apparently I underestimated myself. Here’s “Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den,” a 92-character poem by Yuen Ren Chao which relies on the tonal variations of a single sound (shi) to tell the story of a “lion addict” with a taste for big cats. For a really crazy experience, I recommend listening to the poem being read aloud.
●
●