The trailer is out for The Tree of Life director Terrence Malick’s latest project, To the Wonder. The film, which stars Javier Bardem, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, and Olga Kurylenko, will be released in 2013.
To the Wonder Trailer
Following the Writer
Over at The Toast, see what Year in Reading Alumnus Alexander Chee has to say about The Queen of the Night, his writing process, and publishing. Our own Sonya Chung’s review of his latest novel pairs nicely.
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Bookstore Unplugged
Apropos of our recent essay by a student hiding out in a bookstore with spotty Wi-Fi to avoid reading online, The Rumpus interviewed a bookstore and coffeeshop owner who has taken the bold step of making his establishment a WiFi-free zone. “I’ve observed and been told many times about how the availability of Wi-Fi creates a space where people are wrapped up in their own, solitary world and not interacting with each other.”
Jonathan Lethem’s New York
At The Rumpus, Richard Greenwald writes about the novels of Jonathan Lethem, urban gentrification, and the Sisyphean feat of achieving authenticity in New York.
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In a Foreign Land
In most portrayals of Cold War espionage, both Communist and capitalist spies appear wedded to their respective ideologies. Yet real spies, as the FBI knows, often have more nebulous motivations. In the Times Book Review, Ben MacIntyre reads the latest by Ha Jin, which centers on a Chinese spy embedded in suburban Virginia.
The Impossible, Part Deux
Last week, the artist Jason Novak did the impossible and sketched out Finnegans Wake. Apparently it wasn’t enough, though, because now he’s drawn In Search of Lost Time.
Art as Activism
“In the media there are a very limited number of ways that people are used to seeing sex-worker characters, and I definitely wanted to break out of that.” The Los Angeles Review of Books interviews Aya de León about her debut novel, Uptown Thief.
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