According to Gilles Deleuze, “the lives of philosophers are rarely interesting.” This may have come as a surprise to Jacques Derrida, who once spent a couple days in jail after cops in the Prague airport tried to frame him for smuggling weed. (This incident gets ample coverage in a new biography of the scholar).
Decenter and Frisk
NYRB Winter Sale
From now until February 28th, you can grab New York Review of Books Classics titles at a steep discount.
●
●
(Winds of) Winter is Coming.
Get your mind right ahead of the Game of Thrones Season 4 premiere by reading this just-released chapter of George R. R. Martin’s sixth Song of Ice and Fire installment, Winds of Winter. Martin told fans in a recent blog post, “The new chapter is actually an old chapter. But no, it’s not one I’ve published or posted before.”
●
●
Steve Jobs Biography Gets Unexpected PR Boon
Walter Isaacson‘s biography of Steve Jobs is slated for a November 21st release. As the Apple CEO announced his resignation last night, the timing of the book Steve Jobs really could not be better.
●
●
Natural Opposition
Recommended Reading: Michele Filgate’s interview with Leslie Jamison, who participated in Year in Reading this year.
●
●
To Cover or Not To Cover
It seems like we’re always directing you to Shakespeare-related literary curiosities, but that’s just because there are so many of them! Head over to Electric Literature and watch as some of the Bard’s more famous plays get a beautiful new redesign.
●
●
Fine By Themselves
Was Virginia Woolf right that the Brontës were too isolated? Or were they just as housebound as their art required them to be? In the latest Atlantic, Judith Shulevitz examines the lives of the family, teasing out evidence that they all used loneliness to their benefit.
●
●
Niffenegger Comics
Audrey Niffenegger has a new short story in the form of a comic. She collaborated with cartoonist Eddie Campbell on a comic about the dangers of using P.I.s to spy on your husband. The comic is one in a series of collaborations between novelists and cartoonists to celebrate the British Library’s forthcoming exhibition of British comics.
●
●
Inherent Vice’s Star-Studded Cast
Paul Thomas Anderson’s movie adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice is going to have one heck of a star-studded cast. Among the names attached to the production thus far are Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Benicio Del Toro, Martin Short and Sean Penn. The film is tentatively scheduled for a 2014 release. (Bonus: Take a sneak peek at Pynchon’s forthcoming novel, Bleeding Edge.)