Grantland‘s got a nice excerpt from Buzz Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights follow-up, After Friday Night Lights. The book was released last week by Byliner.
Life After Boobie
James Franco’s Syllabus
Before James Franco’s class began, he assigned each of his students to conceive a short film inspired by a different C.K. Williams poem about “decay, but also a sense of memory and rejuvenation.” This November, the class will travel to Detroit to shoot the movie.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Sebald; Ugresic; Storace; Nunn; Mailer
Out this week: A Place in the Country by W.G. Sebald; Europe in Sepia by Dubravka Ugresic; The Book of Heaven by Patricia Storace; Chance by Kem Nunn; and new paperback editions of Norman Mailer’s Ancient Evenings and Tough Guys Don’t Dance.
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No Comment
Having grown up in Russia, New Republic senior editor Julia Ioffe is in a uniquely good position to cover the Sochi Olympics, which is why she’s writing regular dispatches from this year’s Winter Games. On Saturday, she published a piece about one of the sadder (yet more predictable) developments of the Games: foreign journalists are bombarding gay residents of Sochi with questions and requests for interviews. (She’s also manning the magazine’s Instagram feed.)
Last words
Japanese director Satoshi Kon died last Tuesday at the age of 46. His last words, a rambling text that his family uploaded to the Internet following his death, have just been translated to English: “Everyone, thank you for all the truly great memories. I loved the world I lived in.”
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Bean Scene
Writers finally have a justification for their $4.00 latte habit. Even though coffee might be a detriment to imagination, the whirring of blenders and cafe chatter can boost creativity. If you want the inspiration jolt without the java, listen to Coffitivity’s recording of cafe ambient noise.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Kincaid, Sendak, Shields, Suri, Capote, Wayne, Wodehouse, Nadler, Sloss, Bauer, Wolf, Guthrie
A very big week for new books: See Now Then by Jamaica Kincaid; My Brother’s Book, the last book completed by Maurice Sendak before his death in May 2012; How Literature Saved My Life by David Shields; The City of Devi by Manil Suri; a new edition of Breakfast at Tiffany’s & Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote; The Love Song of Jonny Valentine by Teddy Wayne (see our interview today); P. G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters; Wise Men by Stuart Nadler; debut novels Autobiography of Us by Aria Beth Sloss and Frances and Bernard by Carlene Bauer; City of Angels, an autobiographical novel by Christa Wolf; and House of Earth, the lost novel of Woody Guthrie.