Robert Bly and Tomas Tranströmer discuss their lives and craft in a series of letters.
Tomas Tranströmer and Robert Bly
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.)
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New Takes on Proust
Add this to the roster of great literary takedowns. Apparently Evelyn Waugh once wrote the following about Proust: “Nobody told me he was a mental defective. He had no sense of time.” (This stands in stark contrast with the views of Aleksandar Hemon, who wrote in a recent Year in Reading piece that Swann’s Way is “one of those miraculous books that gets better with every re-reading.”)
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Listen to a Genius
Recommended Listening: David Naimon’s interview with Karen Russell on Between The Covers. You can also find a transcript of the interview in the latest issue of The Missouri Review. Russell just won a MacArthur Genius Grant.
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Waxwing Debuts
Waxwing, a new literary journal, has published its first issue online. The journal’s editors state that their mission is “to include American writers from all cultural identities — in terms of race, ethnicity, indigenous tribe, gender, class, sexuality, age, education, ability, language, religion, and region — alongside international voices, published bilingually.”
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Curiosities
io9 offers up “The Twenty Science Fiction Novels that Will Change Your Life,” from Frankenstein to Pattern Recognition. (via)Cathleen Schine on the charms of Peter CareyThe “Thomas Bernhard cult” claims a new initiate.F.O.T.M. (Friend of The Millions) Lydia Millet talks about “endangered species, the idea of motherhood, and her stint at Hustler.””Why do scribblers make drinking their second art? For one thing, it primes them for their task.” Writers and booze.Some American Studies undergrads at The University of Virginia have put together an online exhibit titled “The New Yorker Magazine in the 1930s.”NPR’s “In Character” segment considers Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Vowell, Doctorow, Shepard, Atkinson, McEuen, Egan
New this week is Sarah Vowell’s Unfamiliar Fishes (reviewed here) along with new story collections from E.L. Doctorow (All the Time in the World) and Jim Shepard (You Think That’s Bad). Also new this week is Kate Atkinson’s latest Jackson Brodie mystery Started Early, Took My Dog and Paul McEuen’s debut mixing “science and suspense” Spiral. Out in paperback is Millions Hall of Famer A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.
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