In the early ‘70s, Kurt Vonnegut helped produce a TV adaptation of his work, Between Time and Timbuktu, that aired on the public TV program NET Playhouse. The adaptation brought together elements from several of the author’s most famous works, including Sirens of Titan, Cat’s Cradle and “Harrison Bergeron.” At Black Balloon Publishing’s blog, you can find YouTube clips and links to the printed script. (Related: our own Lydia Kiesling read Vonnegut’s Letters.) (h/t The Rumpus)
Poignant Sci-Fi Variety Hour
The Iron Man
Sasha Dugdale believes that Ted Hughes’s greatest contribution to the world of poetry remains Modern Poetry in Translation, the magazine which got its start thanks to an off-hand suggestion by Hughes at a cocktail party in the mid-sixties. Here’s our review of Jonathan Bate’s recent take on the poet, Ted Hughes: The Unauthorized Life.
Life in Letters
“To age is to understand that the powers of total recovery are gone, are no longer anticipated (except by those who, having lost their marbles, no longer know what to anticipate).” The epistolary legacy of writers such as Samuel Beckett, Saul Bellow, and Elizabeth Bishop offers invaluable insight into the process of growing older, writes Robert Fay for The Atlantic. See also our own Lydia Kiesling on the narrative possibilities of leaked emails.
●
●
Breaking Out
As part of a collaboration with several international magazines, Full-Stop is publishing Babelsprech International, a series of articles on poetry around the world. In the latest edition, Karel Piorecký writes about contemporary Czech poetry, drawing a line between the pre- and post-Communist periods. Related: John Yargo on the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal.
New Release Tuesday
One of the most anticipated novels of the year is out today: David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. Also newly available, Booker shortlister The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds.
●
●
The Whale Arrives
The work of Elvio Gandolfo, whose novel Cada vez más cerca (“Each Time Closer”) won Argentina’s equivalent of the Pulitzer in 2013, is rarely published in English. So it’s a special treat to find his magical story about a whale falling out of the sky, newly translated for the anthology A Thousand Forests in One Acorn, available free at Ninth Letter.
●
●
Looking Back
The Morning News “gathered writers and thinkers around the world and asked them to sift through the past year of revolutions, deaths, discoveries, and breakthroughs to answer: What was the most important event of 2011?”
●
●
Hunger Games on a Lean Budget
Skip the overpriced coffee today and treat yourself to the entire Hunger Games trilogy (on Kindle) for the low, low price of $5.
●
●