Two French novelists, two books about dead babies: Literary cat fight, canny PR scheme, or “psychological plagiarism”? Read all about the literary feud that’s captivating France here.
Camille Laurens V. Marie Darrieussecq
The Collector of Baskervilles
If there’s anyone more obsessive than Sherlock Holmes, it’s Glen Miranker. The former Apple executive owns the largest private collection of Sherlock Holmes works, totaling 4,500 items including books, manuscripts, illustrations, and other oddities. How he amassed such a collection isn’t a mystery — he’s been at it since the 1970s.
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Publishing the Torture Report
Independent publisher Melville House worked straight through December to publish the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture in time for the New Year. Now co-founder Dennis Johnson talks with Vulture about why his press decided to publish the book at all, and about the varied moral and practical concerns at stake when working on such a project.
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Fire It Up
Michael B. Jordan was tapped to play Montag in HBO’s adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. The project, which will also star Michael Shannon as Beatty, is currently under development. (Bonus: Tanjil Rashid on “Bradbury’s Middle East Connection“)
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A Fatal Continuity
“I don’t know what wave feminism we are in now. Fourth? Fifth? But Ms. Attenberg, it depresses me to no end that the gritty, credible, less kissed-by-God heroine of your book, Andrea Bern, a single, childless, 39-year-old straight woman, a character created almost 50 years after Mary Richards, is still realistically struggling with and defying convention because she isn’t married.” On Jami Attenberg’s new novel.
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Byron-ness
Which Lord Byron is the most Byron-y? Let Mallory Ortberg tell you in her rankings of Byron portraits.
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It’s Okay, I Guess
If your default mood hovers between melancholy and despair, you may be cheered (or at least made a bit less glum) by this argument that striving for happiness is bad for us in the long run. Mari Ruti makes the case that a “happy, balanced life” depends in large part on a kind of emotional numbness.