The new Wizard of Oz prequel, Oz: The Great and Powerful, which stars Mila Kunis and James Franco among others, has its first official trailer. The film will release in 2013.
There’s A New Oz in Town
The Queens of Repulsive Realism
A new wave of "Repulsive Realism" features characters who manufacture and revel in their own mire and rebel against packaged femininity.
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Out There
As a cultural center with a very different makeup than the various home bases of the publishing world, Los Angeles often gets short shrift in discussions of literary cities. At the LARB (naturally), Sarah-Jane Stratford writes about the city’s importance to speculative literature, with an emphasis on the works of Ray Bradbury. Related: Tanjil Rashid on Bradbury’s Middle East connection.
Hard to Categorize
The Naipaul Question, as Morgan Meis calls it, is simple: is V.S. Naipaul too offensive to be taken seriously? His recent biography includes scenes of abuse and moments of straightforward racism. But Meis thinks the issue is more complicated than whether Naipaul is a monster — the author is, in his phrasing, too “protean” to be pinned down.
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New York City on Fire
The trailer for City on Fire, Garth Risk Hallberg’s highly anticipated 944-page debut novel, is finally here. The trailer features a new song by Paul Maroon and Year in Reading alumnus Hamilton Leithauser. Also check out the opening paragraph of the novel.
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If You Give a Librarian a Cookie
A Cambridge University librarian opened up a rare book from the 16th century...only to find a half-eaten chocolate chip cookie.
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Ten-Part Twitter Interviews with Sheila Heti
In a new ten-part Believer series, Sheila Heti is interviewing ten of her “favorite people on Twitter” so they can “talk about what they do on Twitter and why – their Twitter philosophies, their do’s and don’ts, and what they make of the medium in general.” Kicking off the series, we have Heti’s interview with Kimmy Walters, who you may know better as @arealliveghost. (You can bookmark this link if you want to keep track of all of the updates.)
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