Eighteenth century literature lives: This Christmas, Jack Black will play Gulliver in an adaption of Jonathan Swift‘s Gulliver’s Travels. See the preview here.
Lemuel Gulliver Redux
Poetry from the Road
Recommended Reading: Amy Woolard’s poem “Things Go South” at TriQuarterly. “Here, the apple don’t fall/From the tree. Here, whatever you/Find lying on the ground is yours./A scratch-off waiting to strike.”
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Cary Fukunaga to Direct WWII Flick
An unpublished novel by ESPN the Magazine editor Paul Kix will be adapted into a movie by True Detective director Cary Fukunaga. The project is known as Noble Assassin, and it will concern a French aristocrat who trains with British Special Operations in hopes of one day returning to his native country to lead the World War II resistance.
Frank Ocean’s Fiction
A while back, Frank Ocean alluded to the possibility of one day writing a novel. Asked by Guardian interviewer Rebecca Nicholson about his immediate plans following the success of his last album, Channel Orange, the musician replied, “I might just write a novel next.” The response seemed unserious. But now, in Jeff Himmelman’s long profile of Ocean for The New York Times Magazine, it appears the idea may have a bit more traction. “It’s fiction,” says Ocean. “And it’s about brothers.”
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A Way Out
Recommended Reading: Ursula Lindsey of The Nation takes a trip to Cairo, where many of the Egyptian capital’s artists and writers are being forced to find a way out due to government crackdowns.
Twenty Years of Jest
Recommended Reading: Tom Bissell reflects on David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest twenty years after its publication. You could also read our review of The David Foster Wallace Reader.
Branching Out
So you’ve read Haruki Murakami. Ready to venture into other Japanese literature? Ploughshares has recommendations for you. We reviewed a few of Murakami’s books if you’d like to read further.
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What’s That Physics Book Doing in Tiger’s Car?
Now this would be a strange way for an obscure book to become an overnight bestseller. Among The Smoking Gun’s photos of the Tiger Woods crash scene is a shot of a book called Get a Grip on Physics by John Gribbin lying amid the broken glass. Maybe brushing up on physics can help your golf game.