Following a long battle with cancer, David Rakoff died Thursday night at the age of 47. Rakoff recently delivered a novel entitled Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die; Cherish, Perish to Doubleday, and fans can look out for it next year. Reflections on Rakoff’s life and legacy can be read courtesy of Jason Diamond and Choire Sicha, and two of Rakoff’s best This American Life pieces can be found here and here.
“When God speaks, he sounds just like David Rakoff did.”
More Baffler
We recently noted the return of The Baffler. Robert Birnbaum recently interviewed the magazine's new publisher John H. Summers.
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The Book Guy
Whether or not you’re an avid collector of NYRB Classics like Stoner, you’ll enjoy this profile of series publisher Edwin Frank, conducted by Millions contributor and Oyster Editorial Director Kevin Nguyen. In the profile, Frank delves into the mindset that guides his choices, tying the rise of the American publishing series to the passage of the GI bill. Sample quote: “Someone seeing a book he or she always loved next to a book he or she had never heard about would say, ‘Wait that’s the book I always loved and it’s back in print, maybe I should buy this one too.’”
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The Tournament of Books Is Underway!
The finalists are set and the judges have been selected, so that means that The Morning News’s Tournament of Books is officially underway. As a special bonus to Millions readers, one of this year’s deciders is our own Lydia Kiesling. Also? One of the books that made the final cut is none other than the one I told you to read a month ago.
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Through the Pain
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Self Publishing Textbooks
A Minnesota high school is saving money on textbooks... by writing its own.
I Buy, Therefore I Write
"It makes you think you are just about to write, for once, something brilliant." Everyone knows that Moleskines don't really affect your writing, but they nevertheless represent a kind of literary standard. As we step into the future and doodling goes digital, will products like electronic writing tablets put the leather-bound versions out of business? Somewhere Hemingway is turning in his grave.
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Adaptation Progress Report
This week in book-to-film adaptations: Meredith Goldstein rounds up some possible and upcoming projects for The Boston Globe, including adaptations of The Goldfinch (which we cast here) and our own Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven.
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The Show-and-Tell Tale Heart
"Due to its adult subject matter, it was the first animated film to receive an “X” rating (or "suitable for those aged 16 and over") in the UK." Open Culture features a creepily fantastic animated adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's classic story "The Tell Tale Heart," noting that the nearly 8-minute short was voted the 24th greatest animation of all time in a survey of animation professionals. And Poe's macabre creation made our own list, from earlier this year, of literature's greatest walls.