Last weekend The Southern Festival of Books took over Nashville. The latest installment of #LitBeat takes you to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s panel there, on the importance of studying–but not romanticizing–history.
The Southern Festival of Books
Image of the Text
Recommended Reading: A brief history of book illustration and books as objects, over at Literary Hub.
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The Ultimate Sentence
“If one-sentence stories are as common as snowflakes, one-sentence novels are as rare as white ravens.” At The New Yorker, Brad Leithauser writes about the one-sentence novel or the point when the story builds to a particular sentence. To give you an example, here’s one of his favorites from Lolita: “I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art.”
Morgan Spurlock’s Guide to Comic-Con
Supersize Me director and star Morgan Spurlock’s latest project has released its first trailer. Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope profiles the atmosphere and attendees (including Seth Rogen and Kevin Smith) of San Diego Comic Con. It will release this April. (via)
Lolita Grows Up
Vladimir Nabokov‘s Lolita has gone through many cover transformations over the years. Did you know this one was supposed to be sideways?
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“Jawline of an aircraft carrier”
“It’s like a crackpot combination of Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge!, Ingmar Bergman’s The Magic Flute and Lars von Trier’s Dogville. Does this crazy idea work? Maybe 70 percent of the time, but when it does it’s both daring and brilliant.” At Salon, Andrew O’Hehir is surprised by Anna Karenina.
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Nabokov Pitches Hitchcock
Remember that time Vladimir Nabokov pitched Alfred Hitchcock a melodramatic love story about a girl and an astronaut? No? Read all about it.
Mercury in Retrograde
“Creativity is back in the house in the second half of the month, so quit your grumbling and get back to work.” These writer horoscopes for the month of March will have you crushing through writers block and haggling over your contracts in no time.