Walter Isaacson‘s biography of Steve Jobs is slated for a November 21st release. As the Apple CEO announced his resignation last night, the timing of the book Steve Jobs really could not be better.
Steve Jobs Biography Gets Unexpected PR Boon
Like Something in the Movies
Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita is one of those rare few classic novels that translates well to the big screen. To some extent, this was intentional — Nabokov often wrote fiction with an eye to selling film rights. John Colapinto writes about the author’s relationship with the cinema over at Page-Turner. You could also read our own Lydia Kiesling’s Modern Library Revue of Lolita.
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James Salter (1925-2015)
Writer James Salter died on Friday. We interviewed him in 2012 and he reflected on memory and on his long life as a writer. He said, “Everything you know, nobody else knows, and everything you imagine or see belongs to you alone. What you write comes out of that, both in the trivial and deepest sense.” Prior to that, in 2010, Sonya Chung wrote about Salter’s legacy and how he finally seemed to be getting his due as more than just “a writer’s writer.”
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The Twelfth What?
Who knew? Here’s a handy infographic from Electric Literature that highlights seventeen films you probably didn’t know were based off of books.
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Death and Taxes
Souvankham Thammavongsa's new fiction is required reading for anyone who's ever had a meltdown in an accountant's office.
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New Maeve Binchy Coming Up
When Maeve Binchy passed away two years ago, she left behind a novel, A Week in Winter, that appeared to cap off an accomplished 40-year career. It turns out her fans have more posthumous work to look forward to: a new 400-page story collection, Chestnut Street, that comes out on April 24th.
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Literary Writers in the Writers Room
Vanity Fair explores the change in attitude among the literati about writing for TV and notes that “[I]ncreasingly, the industry is ransacking bookshelves for adaptable novels and short stories. And fiction writers are becoming show-runners themselves.”
Burroughs’ Selected Letters
Recommended Reading: The selected letters of William S. Burroughs at The Paris Review Daily. Read his correspondences with family and writers Allen Ginsberg and Norman Mailer. Pair with Jonathan Clarke’s article on why an author’s biography will never be more important than their writing.
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Melissa Lozada-Oliva’s Remembers the Beauty of the World Through Poetry
Melissa Lozada-Oliva discusses her new novel in verse, Dreaming of You, and the role poetry plays in keeping us attuned to the beauty around us.
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