The New Yorker’s book blog continues to host “Questioningly,” a so-called Twitter game show. The most recent installment featured the imagined Facebook status updates of literary figures, and was hosted by Ben Greenman. Who, might I add, is on a roll these days over at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency too.
Ben Greenman is on a roll
The Marriage Plot, The Movie?
Superbad and Adventureland director Greg Mottola is reportedly eying Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel The Marriage Plot for a possible big screen adaptation.
●
●
New Directions’ Birthday Bash
On a more optimistic note, New Directions, New York City’s inestimable and long struggling (but “long dazzling!”) publishing house, will be throwing itself a 75th birthday party on Thursday, October 27. (They just redesigned their website and colophon, too.)
Indie Bound
Naysayers, consider this: in the digital era, the brick-and-mortar bookstore might be experiencing a resurgence.
●
●
The Perks of Being A Wallflower
“Eleven years later, the Atlantic Monthly editor, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, made a similar request to an obscure, retiring poet named Emily Dickinson who had written a letter asking if her verses ‘breathed.’ Her response was much like Melville’s, if typically elliptical: ‘Could you believe me—without? I had no portrait, now, but am small, like the Wren, and my Hair is bold, like the Chestnut Bur—and my eyes, like the Sherry in the Glass, that the Guest leaves—Would this do just as well?'” The age-old problem: how writers deal with publicity.
Interviews with Ambitious Readers
HTMLGiant is running a cool series of interviews with readers who recently finished long or difficult books. Check out their takes on Lee Child’s Echo Burning, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, and William Gaddis’s The Recognitions over here, here, and here, respectively. Also, while on the topic of difficult books, check out Emily Colette Wilkinson and Garth Risk Hallberg’s round-up of their ten top picks.
Blooms of Darkness wins the Independent Prize for Foreign Fiction
Aharon Appelfeld, a prolific Israeli novelist, has won the Independent Prize for international fiction for his latest book, Blooms of Darkness. Check out our guide to this year’s award’s shortlist.
●
●