“No one took this further, with more imagination and daring…At a time when American groups would often dress down—affluent suburban kids disguised as Appalachian farmers or Canadian lumberjacks – Bowie quite deliberately dressed up.” David Bowie’s sartorial legacy.
The Man Who Clothed the World
Evelyn Waugh’s Brother Invented the Cocktail Party
“Unable to replicate the success of his first novel [The Loom of Youth],” writes Philip Quarles, “[Alec Waugh] did create a lasting impact by being credited with inventing the cocktail party when he shocked guests by serving, instead of afternoon tea, rum swizzles.”
Televising Literature
“Tom Stoppard isn't shy about tackling literary giants. The British playwright has rewritten Hamlet for the stage and recently turned Tolstoy's Anna Karenina into a Hollywood feature. But he struggled with a television adaptation of Ford Madox Ford's sprawling modernist masterpiece Parade's End.”
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2010 Best Translated Longlist
Three Percent has unveiled the longlist for its 2010 Best Translated Book Award. Roberto Bolaño, J. M. G. Le Clézio, and Orhan Pamuk all made the cut.
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Based on a True Story
Jon Methven (of This Is Your Captain Speaking) has a problem: one of his characters trashed his novel on Amazon.
Earth’s Song
Recommended Reading: Joseph Fasano's “Coda,” which is The Missouri Review's poem of the week. "Now he is listening for beginning./Now he is lying/among that sinew,/asking, as a boy would, where his song goes."
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Monday Links
The New Yorker lovefest continues: Emdashes is compiling a list of the New Yorker articles that have appeared in Houghton Mifflin's annual Best American Essays series. It's a perfect guide for dipping into your Complete New Yorker set. Update: Emdashes has also done a "short stories" version of the list.My cousin Mitch produces a survey of state quarters. Arkansas: thumbs down. Connecticut: thumbs up!The Regret the Error blog (which tracks all sorts of funny newspaper corrections) has produced a book with a serious sounding subtitle.I would love to get my hands on Transit Maps of the World, an encyclopedic book that's already been noted by Boing Boing and kottke.
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Shout Out
Recommended Reading: Aaron Burch's new poem "Far from the Hudson" at Big Lucks. You might want to put some Wu-Tang on when you read this.
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