Following a recent essay on the value of ambivalence, our own Mark O’Connell explores the nature of confidence in this week’s New York Times Magazine. Perhaps not surprisingly, he writes that this year’s Web Summit convinced him that tech moguls are congenitally more confident than writers.
Should We Even Publish This?
Jane at 40
The Austen Project, launched last year, asks prominent contemporary writers to reimagine Jane Austen’s classics in modern times. (Thus far, we’ve seen Joanna Trollope’s Sense and Sensibility and Val McDermid’s Northanger Abbey.) In perhaps the most significant adaptation yet, Curtis Sittenfeld has announced that her Pride and Prejudice will feature a 39-year-old Jane Bennet. After all, Jane (23 in the original novel), is “pretty much teetering on the edge of spinsterhood.”
●
●
Predictions from the 1930s
In 1936, The Colophon, a now-defunct quarterly for book collectors, asked its readers to list ten authors “whose works would be considered classics in the year 2000.” Their first six answers hold up. The next four? Not so much.
“Beck has published nine books since 2008”
Laurie Winer‘s exploration of Glenn Beck‘s literary career is sure to raise some eyebrows.
●
●
One comment:
Add Your Comment: Cancel reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Place to Place
“Now the lattice that connects us is digitally immediate we travel all the more, but we’ve lost this thrill of adventure. It’s oddly touching to read a novel where journeys are so inherently exciting, and it makes the book both consummately funny and poignantly elegiac.” On the novel Changing Places by David Lodge.
●
●
Nerd Jeopardy Happened and Our Correspondent Was There
Presenting the second installment of our Tumblr’s newest feature, #LitBeat, which offers coverage of literary events.
“New” Zora Neale Hurston
The Chronicle of Higher Education analyzes three short stories by Zora Neale Hurston never before reprinted.
●
●
A Moving Image of A Moveable Feast
Actress Mariel Hemingway, granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway, will be producing a film adaptation of A Moveable Feast, a memoir of Hemingway’s early years as a writer in Paris. The essays feature a colorful cast of literary characters, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ford Madox Ford, Gertrude Stein, and Alice B. Toklas.
●
●
From Mr. O’Connell’s article:
“I saw a keen absurdity in these barons of techno-capital, with their passionately held clichés and their cheerful belief in their personal capacity to change the world,”
That’s the best phrase I’ve read for ages! Perhaps a compromise is in order, a bit less self doubt for Mr. O’Connell and his wry, on-the-spot observations, and a bit more for the tech moguls, given their habit of foisting bug-ridden, not-ready-for-market software programs on the unsuspecting public!
Moe Murph
Dreading Next Microsoft Office Suite Upgrade