JW McCormack has some Notes Toward [A Potential] Film Adaptation of Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 up at The American Reader. As somebody who can’t even fathom making Cormac McCarthy’s decidedly less brutal (although still unimaginably brutal in its own way) Blood Meridian into a film, let me tell you: the idea of turning 2666 into a theater-ready motion picture seems impossible. (P.S. You really should just read both of those books…)
2666: The Movie?
Ireland’s Debt; Debt to Ireland
John Jeremiah Sullivan writes about heritage, history, literature, and the Emerald Isle in this piece for The New York Times Magazine, “My Debt to Ireland.” In the essay, Sullivan talks about the Aran Islands, and in particular Dún Aonghasa. On our Tumblr, I’ve shared some photos I took at the place.
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Writing By Heart
We’ve told you about The Atlantic’s By Heart series a few times before. Now, here’s a compendium of some of the series’ best advice on writing collected from the past year.
Miscellany
Bat Segundo’s BEA podcasts continue. Yours truly makes a brief appearance in the latest installment.Elizabeth Crane is discussing George Saunders’ collection In Persuasion Nation at her blog this week.Meant to post this Friday, but luckily I think spelling bee-related links have an indefinite shelf life. Language Hat and his band of commenters provide indispensible commentary on the word that won the National Spelling Bee, “ursprache,” and other Bee topics.
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La Grande Mort
“A coroner’s pronouncement of suicide (felo da se) resulted in forfeiture of the deceased’s goods and property to the state, often leaving any surviving relatives destitute. So the increasingly common verdict of temporary insanity (non compos mentis) may suggest a change in how people understood the act of self-destruction: no longer construed as a demonic temptation, it came instead to be viewed as a symptom of lunacy.” On the prevalence of suicide in eighteenth-century English literature.
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