David Foster Wallace has become an American legend in his own right, so it makes sense that he’ll be coming to the big screen soon. Jason Segel will play the famous writer in an adaptation of David Lipsky’s Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself with Jesse Eisenberg as Lispky. Can one movie handle this much neurosis?
A Supposedly Fun Thing We Aren’t Sure About
Nabokov on the Run
One hundred years ago this week, a teenage boy named Vladimir Nabokov fled revolutionary Russia with his family for the safety of Western Europe.
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Almighty Beyoncé
“O Unslaked Bill Maher, is it true that everything sucks? It probably is, but I didn’t think we were supposed to know that yet.” Fathers of pre-teen girls appeal to higher powers of various, disparate denominations over at McSweeney’s.
Mark Twain’s Posthumous Career
Roger Boylan at the Boston Review writes about the flourishing posthumous career of Mark Twain: “…more than 5,000 previously unknown letters of Twain’s have surfaced in the last 50 years. This represents an average of two new letters per week, but still only about one-tenth of the 50,000 or so he is believed to have written.” And at Slate, Craig Fehrman discusses the “brilliant brand management” behind the handling of Twain’s autobiography.
Chasing After Literature
What is it like to work for a major book publisher? In an excerpt from the new reprint of her My Misspent Youth, Meghan Daum discusses the myth of the glamorous editorial job, one in which no time is wasted reading self-help books and unauthorized biographies of cable stars. As she explains it, “We’re secretaries fully versed in Derrida, receptionists who have read Proust in French.” Also check out our own Hannah Gersen’s review of Daum’s latest essay collection The Unspeakable.
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Appearing Elsewhere
Today begins the Flatmancrooked LAUNCH of The Millions staff writer Edan Lepucki and her novella, If You’re Not Yet Like Me. Go here to pre-order a copy of the signed and numbered limited first edition.
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Just Another Award
“Four years after first announcing the decision to open the prize to Americans, the Booker is virtually indistinguishable from its competitors. It is exactly what many feared it would become: corporate and daft.” Alex Shephard writing for The New Republic about why the Man Booker Prize isn’t interesting anymore. Still, should you want to know who’s shortlisted this year, here’s our roundup.