Philip Roth, who just authorized Blake Bailey to be his official biographer, has written an “Open Letter to Wikipedia” wherein the author states his grievance with the site’s entry for his novel The Human Stain. Related: can we just give this dude the Nobel already?
Philip Roth v. Wikipedia
Melville House withdraws from Amazon’s Best Translated Book Awards
Citing Amazon’s “predatory and thuggish practices,” Melville House has withdrawn from future participation in the Best Translated Book Awards.
“Mookie Blaylock dresses up as Mookie Blaylock for Halloween.”
What better way to celebrate the Super Bowl than by reading a poem about basketball?
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The Fantastic Ursula K. Le Guin
“To talk to Le Guin is to encounter alternatives. At her house, the writer is present, but so is Le Guin the mother of three, the faculty wife: the woman writing fantasy in tandem with her daily life.” The New Yorker dedicates a long profile to Ursula K. Le Guin. Pair with our interview with the prolific author.
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The Confessions of Bill Styron
Now that you can purchase the letters of William Styron, you can note how especially funny (and sad) it is that Darkness Visible, the author’s book-of-self-help-slash-memoir-slash-confession, sold well enough to overshadow the novels that made his name.
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August: Osage County to Film
Tracy Letts’ outstanding play August: Osage County was tapped for a movie adaptation back in 2010, but the project seemed to fall by the wayside shortly after. Then, last week, Bob Weinstein (of The Weinstein Company) announced the adaptation will begin filming this fall. It’ll star Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts. You can read an excerpt from the play on our Tumblr.
Highlighting the Handmaid
“We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.” BookRiot did us all a service by finding out the 10 most highlighted passages of (the e-book edition of) Margaret Atwood‘s The Handmaid’s Tale. You must also read our own Edan Lepucki on reading and re-reading Atwood.
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Murakami’s latest out in Japan
The third volume of Haruki Murakami’s mega-hit 1Q84 went on sale Friday morning in Japan.
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Let’s Find a Way to Make this Debate Happen
The London Review of Books made Jenny Diski watch and review Downton Abbey. Let’s just say she and our own Garth Risk Hallberg could probably have a nice debate about it.