“These are terrific diversions, but their status next to the book is a little ambiguous. Isn’t using animation to advertise a book a little like using sculpture to promote poetry?” asks Lindesay Irvine in this article about book trailers in The Guardian. If you’re looking for a diversion, this video short based on César Aira‘s Ghosts is certainly worth watching.
On The Rise of the Book Trailer
Celebrating van Gogh
Celebrate van Gogh’s birthday (March 30, 1853) with this post from Brain Pickings on the artist’s meditations on the human pursuit of greatness.
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Could the internet save book reviews?
Sarah Fay, associate editor of The Paris Review, has a piece in The Atlantic on the digitization of book reviewing, framed beautifully by references to George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Confessions of a Book Reviewer.” She praises Bookslut, Nancy Pearl, Goodreads, and The Los Angeles Review of Books for their collective skills of recommendation, reviewing, and New Criticism. I’d add The Quarterly Conversation, The Rumpus, The New Inquiry, The Morning News (for their annual Tournament of Books feature), and of course, The Millions.
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Remembering Gregory Rabassa
Gregory Rabassa, literary translator and professor at Queens College, died this past week. Rabassa helped introduce Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch, among others, to English-language readers. He was 94 years old.
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E-reading with Jonathan Franzen
It was with “a sort of resigned sigh” that Jonathan Franzen signed some reddit user’s kindle.
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I’m Not Excited
The “Albums of Our Lives” series over at The Rumpus is a consistent source of entertaining essays. This week’s contribution, which focuses on Vampire Weekend’s Modern Vampires of the City, is no aberration.
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This Glorious Respite
“It is now, at this precise moment when I become woefully aware of the cruel transience of this seasonal offering, rarely lingering beyond the Marigold blooms of latter March, and at once I am lost amidst a magnificent vision, one in which our hallowed Saint Patrick himself is riding shotgun alongside me in this very Camry.” In which James Joyce orders a shamrock milkshake.
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I Love Candy
“I wanted to tell him: Shut up! You’re ruining my high. People fall in love every single day.” A delightful little Dentist Poem by Daisy Friedman from the archives of The Paris Review.
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Where Have You Been
Recommended Reading: Mark L. Keats explores “international adoption as resettlement.”
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Book trailers haven’t fully found their form yet, but there’s definitely an artistic connection to be found between the forms. I runs a company that creates book trailers that are cinematic, affordable, and hopefully stylish. One way or the other, authors and publishers need a visual component to build fan bases and sell more books. Why not make something really cool and cinematic rather than the same old slide show with still frames that makes people not want to read anything.