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
Adults These Days
According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, 75% of Americans between the ages of 16 and 29 read at least one print book in the past year. The same can be said for only 64% of Americans aged 30 and older.
The Empathy Exams
“[G]uess what, spending hours of your spare time plowing through some dense and symbol-laden carnival of affectation and ambiguity only makes you resentful of the publishing industry that pushed the book on you in the first place.” Alex Balk at The Awl takes the piss out of recent studies that have suggested reading literary fiction might make us better people. Writer John Vaillant, whom we interviewed last year, might disagree.
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Tolstoy in Russia
Last year Russians wrestled over Tolstoy much as they did when he was alive. The New York Times documents Russian statesman Sergei V. Stepashin’s difficult journey to rehabilitate Tolstoy’s reputation.
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It Certainly Beats the Overlook
Now this is the kind of fellowship an author can really get behind: The Standard, East Village, has teamed up with The Paris Review to offer a free hotel room to a writer in need of “three weeks of solitude in downtown New York City.” The deadline for applications is November 1. And in case you’re wondering, the answer is yes. Of course the fellowship will conclude with a swank cocktail party.
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Ready Your Bookmarks, Ladies and Gentlemen
Hear ye, hear ye! The annual Morning News Tournament of Books has begun! (ICYMI: I wrote about their bracket last week.)
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Curiosities
io9 offers up “The Twenty Science Fiction Novels that Will Change Your Life,” from Frankenstein to Pattern Recognition. (via)Cathleen Schine on the charms of Peter CareyThe “Thomas Bernhard cult” claims a new initiate.F.O.T.M. (Friend of The Millions) Lydia Millet talks about “endangered species, the idea of motherhood, and her stint at Hustler.””Why do scribblers make drinking their second art? For one thing, it primes them for their task.” Writers and booze.Some American Studies undergrads at The University of Virginia have put together an online exhibit titled “The New Yorker Magazine in the 1930s.”NPR’s “In Character” segment considers Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne.