All six of the forthcoming films previewed by The Week’s Kerensa Cadenas look outstanding, but of particular relevance to Millions readers is The Invisible Woman. The film, which is an adaptation of Claire Tomalin’s biography of the same name, follows the life of Ellen “Nelly” Ternan (Felicity Jones), an actress who met Charles Dickens (Ralph Fiennes) and became his secret mistress.
Charles Dickens’s Mistress
Appearing Elsewhere
Our own Bill Morris has a piece in Artes Magazine about a landscape painter, Rackstraw Downes, who is finally “having a long-overdue moment.”
Let’s Write About Sex, Baby!
Authors, are you struggling to get your book’s characters together? Are they lacking a little spark, a little intimacy? Well, have no fear. The folks at Open Road Media put together a video with Erica Jong, Lawrence Block, Patricia Gaffney, and a few more authors on The Art of Writing Sex Scenes. This should do the trick.
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“It is the last hour of the city watch.”
In an act of grand generosity, Ilya Bernstein has made his translation of Osip Mandelstam’s poetry available for free via Google Books. (h/t Keith Gessen)
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The Haints of Language
“Sometimes dialect is the only way a person can stay rooted to family, to community, to everything that is familiar in a fast-changing world where nothing is certain,” Amy Clark writes at The New York Times. She gives some tips on when and how to use dialect in your writing for the best and least offensive effect.
A Book A Day Keeps Depression Away
“Doctors in England will soon be prescribing books as well as pills to patients suffering from anxiety and depression,” writes Harvey Morris. Hopefully none of these bummers make the cut.
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On the Auction Block
It exists! The long-lost letter from Neal Cassady that inspired Jack Kerouac to write On the Road will be auctioned next month at Christies, ending an 18-month-long battle over its ownership and another 60-year-long battle over its existence. As Kerouac said, “It was the greatest piece of writing I ever saw, better’n anybody in America, or at least enough to make Melville, Twain, Dreiser, Wolfe, I dunno who, spin in their graves.”
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