“‘What I want,’ a young Luis Buñuel announced to the audience at an early screening of his first film, Un Chien Andalou (1929), ‘is for you not to like the film … I’d be sorry if it pleased you.’ The film’s opening scene, which culminates in a close-up of a straight-edge razor being drawn through a woman’s eyeball, is often taken as the epitome of cinema’s potential to do violence to its audience…Horror movies frighten us; violent thrillers agitate us; sentimental stories make us cry. Suffering is often part of our enjoyment. Within limits, however: we are not to be so displeased that we are not pleased. Buñuel deliberately went beyond the limits of permissible displeasure. And so, in his own way, does the Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke.”
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Authors on Trump
A formidable group of authors, including Year in Reading alum Joyce Carol Oates, Steven Pinker, and Rich Benjamin, comment on Donald Trump’s rise to power. You could also consider this literary cage match between Trump, Faulkner, and Hemingway.
More of the Little Prince
Unpublished pages from Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince have been unearthed, and they contain clues to a political reading of the children’s classic.
How To Be A Woman (For Less)
(American) Readers who dug Rob Delaney’s Year In Reading post will be pleased to learn that the eBook of Caitlin Moran’s How To Be A Woman is on sale for the low, low price of $1.99. (Along with nine other memoirs, too!)
Watching A Wrinkle in Time
The movie adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time premiered this week. Before or after you see the movie (there are some spoilers if you haven’t seen it or read the book) read this essay by Alanna Bennett on the simple, but revolutionary power of the story and Ava DuVernay’s book-to-screen vision.
Matt Kish on his Heart of Darkness Illustrations
In November, Matt Kish will write a series of guest posts for Tin House’s Open Bar Blog. He’ll be “exploring some of the ideas and processes behind five of [his] Heart of Darkness illustrations.” Over on his personal blog, however, he’s asking for readers to help him select which five pieces he should discuss. Kish, who has previously illustrated the pages of Moby Dick, was recently mentioned in our Great Second-Half 2013 Book Preview.
New Bechdel Memoir
Yesterday we learned Alison Bechdel won a MacArthur grant, and we thought we couldn’t be happier. Then we heard there’s a new Bechdel graphic memoir in the works, The Secret to Superhuman Strength.
The Nobel Isn’t Everything
Wole Soyinka does not approve of the push for Chinua Achebe to be awarded a posthumous Nobel Prize for Literature, and he doesn’t appreciate fan letters asking for his support to that end. “How did creative valuation descend to such banality?” Soyinka remarks in an interview with SaharaReporters. “Do these people know what they’re doing – they are inscribing Chinua’s epitaph in the negative mode of thwarted expectations. I find that disgusting.”
The 2016 BTBA Longlist
The longlist for this year’s Best Translated Book Award came out. Fiction finalists include Year in Reading alumna Katrina Dodson’s translation of Clarice Lispector’s Complete Stories (reviewed here by Magdalena Edwards), Ann Goldstein’s translation of Elena Ferrante’s The Story of the Lost Child, Lisa Dillman’s translation of Yuri Herrera’s Signs Preceding the End of the World (discussed here in our Book Report), and Christina MacSweeney’s translation of Valeria Luiselli’s The Story of My Teeth (reviewed here by Lily Meyer). Poetry finalists include Jason Weiss’s translation of Silvina Ocampo and Fiona Sze-Lorrain’s translation of Yi Lu.