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
O Pioneer!
Audiobook fans take note: Our Millions original ebook The Pioneer Detectives by Konstantin Kakaes is now available from Audible.com.
Garth Greenwell on Being a Mystery to Yourself
Garth Greenwell discusses the narrator of his two novels, who repeatedly "undergoes a process of coming into self-knowledge."
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A 20 Year Overnight Success
Joe Fassler interviews recent MacArthur Genius and Year-in-Reading alum Viet Thanh Nguyen on the myth of overnight success, balancing an academic career while still finding time to write novels and the sacrifices all writers must make. Over at Electric Literature.
“The heat of autumn / is different from the heat of summer.”
With the help of Flora Coker, the Poetry Foundation created an animated reading of Jane Hirshfield’s “The Heat of Autumn.”
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O Detroit
You may have heard that our own Bill Morris has a new book on shelves. He talked about it with fellow Millions staff writer and California author Edan Lepucki. At the LARB, Diana Clarke reviews the book, which she calls “a sharp critique of the contemporary American post-racial narrative,” among other things.
Ye Olde Best Books
Of course this is always an ongoing discussion about which books will endure, and which books are the best. Such talk is fueled by annual “Best Of” lists. But what did that conversation sound like… in 1898?
“Perfect translation … is of course impossible.”
Ever wonder how Google Translate works? Now you know. These two pieces (one and two) on Lydia Davis‘ translation of Madame Bovary are worth revisiting, too.
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