Shalom Auslander believes. He can’t really seem to help it.
Hello, Shalom.
Take It to the Bank
It’s notoriously difficult to figure out how to make a living as a freelance writer. The process forces the writer to learn the finer points of negotiation. At the Ploughshares blog, Steph Auteri writes about the “abstract mathematics” of her freelance career, presenting a list of everything she considers before taking on an assignment. Pair with: our own Nick Ripatrazone on teaching the business of creative writing.
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V. I. G.
A V.I.G. (very important garment) will be making its way to the U.S. this August. Pride and Prejudice fans can now see the shirt Colin Firth wore as Mr. Darcy in the exhibition “Will & Jane: Shakespeare, Austen, and the Cult of Celebrity.” We rewrote the title of Pride and Prejudice and other books as clickbait. You should definitely read it.
Viva the Memoir!
Deb Olin Unferth’s memoir Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War hits shelves today. To celebrate the genre, she’s curated a special section in this month’s Guernica, with selections by Joshua Cohen and Rozalia Jovanovic, and forthcoming pieces by Porochista Khakpour and Clancy Martin.
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Book Drop
Doubleday pulled a Beyonce and published Colson Whitehead’s latest book, The Underground Railroad, a month early. Oprah chose Whitehead’s book for her book club, and Doubleday “secretly started shipping out 200,000 copies in anticipation of the announcement.” You can also read a review from Michiko Kakutani at the New York Times.
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The Two Percent
What would happen if two percent of the world’s population disappeared overnight? HBO’s new teaser for its adaptation of Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers asks us to contemplate that question. From what we see so far, it looks terrifying. The series premieres on June 15.
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Christopher Lee’s Metal Take on Don Quixote
Christopher Lee, perhaps best known to American audiences as the man who played Count Dooku (Star Wars) and Saruman (Lord of the Rings), is also an accomplished singer and musician. Evidently, he’s also quite literary, as his most recent project — The Metal Knight — demonstrates. To wit: the album was inspired by Don Quixote. (Trailer here.)