David Satter’s It Was a Long Time Ago and It Never Happened Anyway gets reviewed for The Daily Beast. The book is a “sweeping study of how the former Soviet Union’s bloody past continues to poison Russia’s present and threatens to strangle the country’s future.”
Imaginary Russia
DFW, Edited
The changes between the transcription of David Foster Wallace reading ‘A fragment of a longer thing’ in 2000 and the version of that story ‘Backbone’ as published in the recent New Yorker. (via The Paris Review)
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The Zen of Steve Jobs
A while back, I mentioned the prescient timing of Walter Isaacson’s forthcoming biography Steve Jobs. As you await its publication, content yourself with Forbes and JESS3’s graphic novel The Zen of Steve Jobs.
Party/Animals
For San Francisco readers: There’s a new show of huge, surreal paper mache animal sculptures up at The Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts (December 4-17th). These paper beasts, featured in the San Francisco Symphony’s performance of Camille Saint-Saens “Carnival of the Animals” and created by local artist Colette Crutcher and her students, will be auctioned off to benefit the MCCLA at a party open to the public on December 17th.
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Praise the Man
“Finally, without my wife, who served as editor, research assistant, and soul mate, this project could never have been finished.” On gendered expectations and book acknowledgments.
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Appearing Elsewhere
For those in the Bay Area, Millions contributor Edan Lepucki will be reading from her novel Days of Insignificance and Evil at the Intersection for the Arts Award Celebration tonight at 7:30 p.m. The address is 446 Valencia St, San Francisco, 94103.
Hollywood and the Brontes
USA Today suggests that Hollywood’s love affair with Jane Austen is ebbing and, with film versions of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights on the way, the bigwigs have moved on to the Brontes.
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Drawing Autism
April is Autism Awareness Month, and a new paperback edition of Drawing Autism displays artwork created by artists all along the spectrum. You can take a look at some examples over here, and New Yorkers can hear from the book’s editor at the United Nations on April 2nd.
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