Clive James gives Pauline Kael a serious critical appreciation in The Atlantic. Last year, The Millions also showed Kael some love, in this review of The Age of Movies.
“No real diminishment was possible.”
Advice in Eight Volumes
Remember that time Haruki Murakami decided to write an advice column and answered over 3,000 letters from fans? Well, now a selection of those letters and his wisdom-filled responses are being collected and published as book in eight volumes. Though there are no current plans to translate the work into English, we hope that changes soon – after all, what could be more charming than Murakami’s advice about cats?
Emily Dickinson’s iPhone
Emily Dickinson would be a really annoying texter. At The Toast, Mallory Ortberg imagines what texts you would receive if Emily had your phone number.
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After the Wall
“[Christa] Wolf was a committed dissident in the GDR (East Germany) and a forceful voice resisting Western triumphalism after reunification. It would seem like some sort of explanation was owed to the public. Yet how does one give an account of oneself when the link to the past, to the psychological and cultural backdrop of such fateful decisions, is not even subjectively available?” On City of Angels: Or, the Overcoat of Dr. Freud.
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Fireproof Books
AbeBooks points to clever fireproof editions of Farenheit 451 and Stephen King’s Firestarter. (Thanks Laurie)
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Curios
NPR offers a nifty gallery that accompanies the publication of this quirky collection: Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure.The Coen Brothers have signed on to helm the film version of Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. The big-screen version of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, meanwhile, is nowhere to be found (though it’s reportedly been in the works for years).Elsewhere in book-to-movie news, Ian McEwen is pleased with the film version of his novel Atonement.Poet and critic Reginald Shepherd reflects on becoming a blogger. “Until a couple of years ago, I barely knew what a blog was, and certainly had never seen one,” he writes. But it proved quite fruitful: “it sometimes seems that my blog has done more to raise my profile than all my more-than-fifteen years of copious publishing put together.”Five reasons not to give up books (the paper ones, as opposed the digital counterparts.)I think it’s an ad for a video game, but this video contains some masterful soccer kung fu.None of us at The Millions is affiliated with Princeton, but this list of the school’s most influential alums is interesting in a random sort of way.The new half-hour HBO show In Treatment is a free podcast at the iTunes store. The show stars Gabriel Byrne as a psychotherapist and each episode represents a single session with one of five patients.The writers’ strike is over. The resulting carnage on the schedules for all your favorite shows is laid out here.
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Distraction-Free Writing Platforms
A new distraction-free writing platform has emerged. Can QuietWrite unseat WriteRoom as the best tool for internet-enabled authors?
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Animated Russian Classics
Polish filmmaker Piotr Dumala spent three years working on his half-hour-long expressionistic adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and the result is a “destructive animation” that’s at once unnerving and beautiful. However in case you’re more pressed for time, you can also get your animated Russian literature fix by checking out Natalia Berezovaya and Svetlana Petrova’s two-minute-long animation for Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita.
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