The first trailer has been released for the cinematic adaptation of Tracy Letts’s Pulitzer-winning play August: Osage County. Here are two of my favorite scenes (one, two) from the play to whet your appetite. The film, which is directed by John Wells, is scheduled for a November release.
August: Osage County Gets a Trailer
Quoi?
French-Canadian writers are in an odd place when it comes to Canadian literature. By the official definition of CanLit, they’re part of the canon, yet because of the Quebecois language barrier, they maintain a certain distance from the literature of English Canada. At Page-Turner, Pasha Malla writes about their odd identity. You could also read Andrew Saikali on Canadian novellas.
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Bildungsroman Babble
The coming-of-age novel is a lot older than most of its protagonists. Gabriel Roth and sometime Millions contributor Kristopher Jansma will discuss the history of the genre at 7 p.m. on Monday, October 28 at the Center for Fiction in New York City. You can read Jansma’s past Millions essays on watching The Killing and searching for lost J.D. Salinger stories.
Carol Hughes to Write Memoir
Ted Hughes’s widow, Carol Hughes, intends to write a memoir about her marriage to the former poet laureate.
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Miéville on “Hauntology”
In a fabulously strange, illuminating, and spooky essay, China Miéville establishes the literary definition of “hauntology.”
My Body Shall Be All Yours
“I am nostalgic for letters. There’s a craft that’s been lost in expressing some kind of desire or passion or bodily experience for someone else.” From James Joyce to Frida Kahlo, The Guardian collects bits of great artists’ erotic missives to one another. And speaking of literary love letters, how about Nicholson Baker‘s Vox [ed. note: it makes a great Valentine’s Day gift]?
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True Romance
We might mock romance readers for how much Kleenex they go through, but they’re more emotionally perceptive than others. A new study on the interpersonal sensitivity of readers found that romance readers are better at discerning facial cues and emotion than other literati. But don’t worry if you aren’t a Nicholas Sparks fan; reading any genre makes you more empathetic, as we’ve reported on before.
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