The trailer for the film version of Michael Lewis’s Moneyball has arrived. (via Kottke, whose skepticism I share)
Moneyball Trailer
Tuesday New Release Day: Ronson; Hunter; Daum; Gruen; Shafak; Boyle
Out this week: So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson; The World Before Us by Aislinn Hunter; Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids, edited by Meghan Daum; At the Water’s Edge by Sara Gruen; The Architect’s Apprentice by Elif Shafak; and The Harder They Come by T.C. Boyle. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2015 Book Preview.
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Haruki Murakami: Master of Blandness
Over at Threepenny Review, Jess Row expounds on “blandness” in the work of Haruki Murakami, and particularly in his 2.8 lb. tome 1Q84—a book tabbed by Charles Baxter in last year’s Year in Reading as the best he’d read all year. Row contemplates the way Murakami’s characters and sentences “almost never lose this placid, observant neutrality,” or “continuous monotone.”
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Sarah Palin, White Goddess
N+1’s Marco Roth turns in an ambitious and historically nuanced exploration of white grievance in a putatively postracial America. Highly recommended.
Dr. Doyle
When Arthur Conan Doyle wasn’t writing Sherlock Holmes, he was a practicing doctor. Thomas Goetz’s new book The Remedy discusses the history of tuberculosis and Doyle’s role in finding a cure with Robert Koch. The Daily Beast interviewed Goetz about how he came up with the idea for the book. “These two characters were part of a much larger story about how scientific discoveries evolve into social change.”
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The Long Goodbye
A lot of writers have alter-egos, but few are as interesting as Benjamin Black, the crime-writing persona of Irish novelist and Year in Reading alum John Banville. The author’s new novel adds an entry to the saga of a crime-fiction icon: Raymond Chandler’s Angeleno detective, Philip Marlowe.
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For Whom the Bell Tolls
The word “whom” appears “just 53 times out of every million [spoken] words,” according to the Corpus of Contemporary American English. This does not bode well for members of future generations – some of whom may be fond of formality.
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From Page to Screen
Some of the most revered literary novels that have appeared in recent years will be adapted for television. Jonathon Sturgeon writes for Flavorwire, “What do we call this new relationship between prestige and streaming TV and the literary novel? The two now shape each other in peculiar, formal ways—like lovers who share an apartment, they’ve started speaking and looking alike.” Pair with this Millions piece on literary magazines in film and TV.
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A very colorful Queen!
Pantone has released a Queenly color wheel, made especially to mark Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee. The wheel is made up of the Pantone referents for the colors her Majesty has worn throughout her reign, and each chip bears a historical note on the particular hue’s tie to her wardrobe. This is especially good news if, like Slate, you think that the Queen is the most fashionable woman in the world.
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Brad Pitt provides skepticism? After Sevem 12 Monkeys, Fight Club, the Oceans movies, Assassination of Jesse James, Burn After Reading, Inglorious Basterds and Tree of Life? I think the man has proven himself by now.
Well, we really don’t know what they are skeptical about, do we? Is it Pitt, is it the content of the movie, is it skepticism about popular non-fiction books made into movies, or is it the ability of this movie to earn money?
Ok. Enough mystery. I am skeptical that this very interesting book, which is primarily about ideas and numbers, will translate well to the screen. The book doesn’t have a very cinematic plot – Oakland doesn’t win the World Series, there is no pivotal game. It’s more about the methodical triumph of numbers over “instinct” over a period of a few years. Maybe there’s room in there for a great movie, but the trailer makes it seem as though the book’s plot is being shoehorned into the typical “sports movie” plot. I mean, throw in Charlie Sheen and a few wisecracks and that could have been the trailer for Major League.
This book/movie has more than numbers going for it. It’s about characters. Billy Beane was exactly the kind of player the “old school” scouts adored. But he was a failure on the field. The story is a triumph of modern analytics over “rut” thinking and a pack mentality. It’s the rebel beating the system, David over Goliath, a classic story-telling structure. Think “The Social Network” in a baseball uniform. It has all the right people in it and behind it. Write it down: This will be a hit.