Continuing its dabbling in content, Amazon has now collected its author interviews, essays, and other tidbits into one section called The Backstory.
Amazon’s Backstory
Milk It Until It’s Dead
Joseph P. Kahn writes for The Boston Globe that books published posthumously are among the most profitable, from Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy to David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King. Pair with the opening lines of The Pale King, and a previously unpublished scene.
A Logical Fit
The Guardian posted a helpful Q & A to shed light on a great mystery: why is Penguin Classics publishing Morrissey’s autobiography?
The Crowning
After his death, fans of David Foster Wallace canonized him as a prophet, according him a degree of benevolence shared by almost no one in American letters. In New York Magazine, Christian Lorentzen argues that Wallace himself worried about this happening, and says he’d “probably be the last person to argue for his sainthood.” His essay pairs nicely with Jonathan Russell Clark on The David Foster Wallace Reader.
More on Rizzoli’s
Rizzoli’s is closing, but if the owners have their way, there’ll be a Rizzoli’s II opening its doors in the near future. In the meantime, you can read this Times piece about the bookstore, which puts its closing into context.
●
●
Kafka’s last living friend remembers
Alice Herz-Sommer, a 106-year-old Holocaust survivor and the last living person who knew Franz Kafka personally, reminisces about her friend in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: “Kafka was a slightly strange man…”
●
●
The Marriage Plot, The Movie?
Superbad and Adventureland director Greg Mottola is reportedly eying Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel The Marriage Plot for a possible big screen adaptation.