Following the successes of Moneyball and The Art of Fielding, young writers with an eye on their book sales are growing more interested in writing baseball books. Fortunately for them, Luke Epplin wrote a guide.
Secrets of the Game
Jean-Patrick Manchette Movie Adaptation on the Way
Idris Elba, Sean Penn and Javier Bardem have signed on to star in a film adaptation of Jean-Patrick Manchette’s novel, The Prone Gunman. According to Christian Blauvelt of Hollywood.com, “Elba will be playing a cloak-and-dagger agent named Dupont who tangles with Sean Penn, who also plays an agent for a clandestine operations outfit who is betrayed by his organization, forcing him on the run across Europe.”
Parul Sehgal Wins NBCC Award for Excellence in Reviewing
Parul Sehgal, nonfiction editor at Publisher's Weekly (and sister of The Millions intern Ujala Sehgal), has been awarded the National Books Critics Circle "Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing." Previous winners include Joan Acocella, Ron Charles, and Sam Anderson. The award was based on her diverse portfolio of work as a reviewer, including a review of Susie Linfield's The Cruel Radiance, a review of Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra: A Life, and her piece on David Abram's Becoming Animal. Congratulations!
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Going In
In 2012, the Portuguese writer José Luís Peixoto, on the occasion of Kim Il-Sung’s 100th birthday, went to North Korea for a fifteen-day trip. The experience led him to write a travel memoir, Inside the Secret, which you can read in serialized form online at Ninth Letter magazine. You could also read Pulitzer laureate Adam Johnson’s new Granta essay about the country.
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How Patrick Bateman Stole Christmas
"Have you guessed who I am? Sometimes I think you have." Is this Dr. Seuss or Bret Easton Ellis? The Awl has a quiz to see whether you can differentiate between sociopaths and the Cat in the Hat.
Like Something in the Movies
Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita is one of those rare few classic novels that translates well to the big screen. To some extent, this was intentional -- Nabokov often wrote fiction with an eye to selling film rights. John Colapinto writes about the author’s relationship with the cinema over at Page-Turner. You could also read our own Lydia Kiesling’s Modern Library Revue of Lolita.
Reading Mustang
Recommended listening: Anjelica Huston reads an excerpt of Deanne Stillman's Mustang.
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