With the movie adaptation of The Great Gatsby slotted to come out next summer and Anna Karenina due out in late November, film critic Richard Brody looks back at some of his favorite movies based on literature and proposes what makes an adaptation successful.
“Turning one’s novel into a movie script is rather like making a series of sketches for a painting that has long ago been finished and framed.” – Nabokov
Letter to Detroit
“The city has the beckoning power of a black hole or the Italian countryside or a castle. There is no way to explain our wiring to someone whose fairytale has always ended somewhere like Florida.” Aisha Sabatini Sloan on calling Detroit home, over at The Offing. Also check out Bill Morris’s Millions piece on movies set in the city.
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Writin’ State o’ Mind
“I try to edit my work in different states of mind. So I’ll go running on a really hot day and then read the 2,000 words I just wrote. Or if I’m upset, or really sleepy, or if I’m drunk, I’ll read this stuff. If you’re sleepy and you find yourself skipping over a paragraph because you’re bored by it and just want to get to the interesting part, it comes out. Those different states of mind are a really interesting filter." Writing advice from Sebastian Junger.
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Vera, or Verdure
Over the course of a half-century, Vladimir Nabokov wrote hundreds of letters to his wife Vera, which are being published in book form this week for the first time. Among other things, they reveal the absurd pet names he invented for her (such as Goosykins and Monkeykins) and display Nabokov musing over whether or not to borrow a friend’s castle for the summer. Also worth reading: our own Garth Risk Hallberg on Nabokov’s Ada, or Ardor.
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Two Feet Bad
"Children have a keen sense of injustice, and this was the thing that upset me the most: the pigs were so unjust." Margaret Atwood recalls an early love of George Orwell.
Uncharted Story Space
How do we map our experiences? Where You Are (our review) attempts to answer this but ends up raising an interesting relationship between print and online story space. At Music & Literature, Reif Larsen traces the history of interactive books and contemplates the future of online story space. "Considering print books have been around for over five hundred years, online publishing is still in its infancy. Much of the map remains blank." Pair with: Larsen's essay on the power of the infographic.
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Between a Rock and a Bookless Place
As libraries struggle to survive in the UK, community-based lending libraries are sprouting up to fill in the gaps. The Society of Authors is threatening to take legal action against these libraries after discovering that they are not required to pay any royalties to authors.
Yupper Class
The release date for Thomas Pynchon’s new novel is three weeks away, and to mark the occasion, Boris Kachka runs through a quick biography of the perpetually mysterious author. Among other things, Kachka points out that Pynchon resides in a fairly odd neighborhood for a recluse to choose to live in -- the Upper West Side. (Previously: "Thomas Pynchon to Publish New Novel" and "New Thomas Pynchon Teaser.")