“Psycho glories in narrative fractures and perverse behavior; it subverts the expectations of an audience already habituated to Hitchcockian suspense by pushing even further, masterfully administering a dose of sheer shock. Hitchcock, on the other hand, struggles to arouse even suspense.” How to watch a film about the master of film.
Behind the Shower Curtain
A Selected Weapon
Sylvia Plath’s final days have long been a source of fascination and horror for many readers. In a forthcoming unauthorized biography of Plath’s husband Ted Hughes, it is claimed that one of Hughes’s more contentious poems, “Last Letter,” was written after an argument the couple had the night before Plath took her own life. Ted Hughes: An Unauthorized Life is out next week.
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“What does any human being want?”
In the Times, Dwight Garner reviews the new edition of Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations, a compendium of quotes from notable black writers dating from ancient times to the present. Among other figures, Thurgood Marshall, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston and Cory Booker all have quotes in the book.
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Janie Crawford and Tea Cake on Air
To commemorate the book’s 75th anniversary, WNYC and WQXR Radio will present a live radio play of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. New Yorkers will be able to catch the broadcast on February 29th and March 1st, and then the rest of the nation can hear it in September.
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Pimpin’ with Remnick
Correction of the day, courtesy of The New York Times: “He did not say that it would not be a ‘pimped out’ version of the article.”
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Trying Anything on the Page with Kiese Laymon
Tressie McMillan Cottom interviews fellow author Kiese Laymon on the fear and willingness to try anything that fuels his writing process.
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Greed is Good Again
There’s a trailer out for the upcoming sequel to Wall Street. Gordon Gekko and his giant mobile phone are back. He is joined, regrettably, by Shia LaBeouf.