This November, moviegoers can catch an adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur (trailer here). Do you think it looks better than last year’s cinematic version of On the Road (trailer here)?
Kerouac Returns to the Big Screen
Betting Big
The Wall Street Journal explores the phenomenon of the million-dollar literary debut. Pair with Edan Lepucki’s Millions interview with her agent about publishing a first book.
Min Jin Lee and the Stories That Paved Her Path
Min Jin Lee looks back on the literature she grew up with and how it allowed her to see her own path to becoming a writer.
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Overlooked Heroines of the African-American Press
"Ida B. Wells was part of a much larger network of black women journalists who dared to wield their pens in the names of truth and justice."
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Who Wrote the First Mystery Novel?
“Never mind whether the butler did it. Here’s a real mystery for you: Who wrote the first detective novel?” Paul Collins at the New York Times takes another look at the usual suspects.
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None Found Here
Not sure what’s honest and what’s not in your life? Then consult Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit, which handily lays out seven tools for identifying bad ideas. The astronomer also provided a list of common fallacies in his 1995 book, The Demon-Haunted World.
The Paper Trail
What writers are actually earning money? Over at Electric Literature, Lincoln Michel takes a look at the new Author Earnings report, which scours Amazon bestseller lists and extrapolates the data to make claims about the state of publishing and self-publishing. Here’s an older Millions piece by Edan Lepucki on self-publishing as supplemental and influential to the traditional route.
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Discussing The Worm
“Magic I think for me is kind of personal. Like, as soon as magic is in play, then I am given permission to imagine a different world, one in which magic things might happen—one where maybe I get some magic to wield if I’m lucky. Where cool stuff might happen at any given moment, cool stuff you wouldn’t even guess at. And for as long as the story holds, I’m kind of living in that world.” John Darnielle talks with Colin Winette about E.R. Eddison‘s The Worm Ouroboros, reading high fantasy and writing Wolf in White Van.