Well, this is interesting. HBO is looking at turning Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad into a TV series.
Goon Squad to the Small Screen?
Translators Deserve More Accolades
Daniel Hahn reminds us that translators are vastly under appreciated. To help combat this, he created the TA First Translation prize, an award that will go to a translator for a book’s English-language debut. “There are many prizes in the book world, perhaps too many. But some exist not merely to reward one individual per year, but also to make a statement about what should be valued, and what we need more of. “
I Tweet Therefore I am
Twitter lets writers think in public, and it’s changing the way we write, Thomas Beller argues in The New Yorker. “Does articulating a thought in public freeze it in place somehow, making it not part of a thought process but rather a tiny little finished sculpture? Is tweeting the same as publishing?”
Takeaway Point
Zadie Smith could write herself out of a Chinese takeout box, and that’s exactly what she does in her essay on the differences between British and American takeout culture, “Take It Or Leave It,” for The New Yorker. “I don’t think any nation should elevate service to the status of culture.”
Tuesday New Release Day: Fowler; Kundera; Swyler; George; Arango; Khalastchi; Makkai
Out this week: Black Glass by Karen Joy Fowler; The Festival of Insignificance by Milan Kundera; The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler; The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George; The Truth and Other Lies by Sascha Arango; Tradition by Daniel Khalastchi; and Music for Wartime by Rebecca Makkai. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great 2015 Book Preview.
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Rape-Rape
Jenny Diski‘s personal take on Roman Polanski and rape, at the London Review of Books.
Beautiful Malaysia
The latest short by James W. Griffiths, We Were Wanderers On a Prehistoric Earth, is an “ode to the incredible flora and fauna of Malaysia.” The film is accompanied by a passage from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and it’s clear that the author’s description of the Congo applies to Southeast Asia quite easily.
Shatoetry
There’s an app called Shatoetry and, yes, it was created by William Shatner. Its purpose? Why, as “a sort of magnetic poetry assembler where every word is read in the offbeat actor’s distinctive tone,” of course.
From the Mixed Up Files of DFW
Newsweek takes an “infinitely fascinating quest” through David Foster Wallace’s just-released archive at University of Texas’ Harry Ransom Center.
Bad idea.