“These were my two first mistakes about honesty: I thought it meant relentless self-flagellation, and I thought it could redeem everything.” Leslie Jamison and Anna Holmes discuss the mistakes they made as young writers.
Making Mistakes
The Stand on Screen
Getting a director for Stephen King’s The Stand was almost as difficult as surviving the virus. The latest director to try is Josh Boone, who is no stranger to adaptations because he’s bringing The Fault in Our Stars to screen. To brush up on your King, read our essay on learning about America through his novels.
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Yankee Spinach Foxtrot
Wilco appeared in a Popeye comic strip, and they also released an animated music video featuring the sailor, Olive Oyl, and Bluto.
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For History to Avoid Repeating Itself
“There needs to be a literary Juneteenth. We can’t rely on publications and presses that have, through the actions and complicity of their leadership, proven oppressive. For history to avoid repeating itself, we need to define sustainability for ourselves. This could mean expanding existing infrastructure, forming new platforms, or simply self-publishing. None of those things are as easy as plugging into what already exists, but given the state of the field, there needs to be a deep interrogation of what already exists to see if it truly values us, sees us.” Casey Rocheteau on the restorative justice of publishing, over at The Offing.
Kafka’s Last Trial
At the New York Times, Elif Batuman has a long and absorbing article on the trial over Kafka’s manuscripts: “It’s impressive that [Kafka’s] sisters had between them four lawyers, although, to put things in perspective, Josef K. at one point meets a defendant who has six.”
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James Franco is Allen Ginsberg
Book to movie news: Soon to hit theaters is a big-screen take on Allen Ginsburg’s Howl, focusing on the obscenity trial Ginsberg faced after the publication of the poem and starring James Franco as Ginsberg (alongside Jon Hamm and Jeff Daniels). (The trailer). The film includes an animation of the poem itself by illustrator Eric Drooker. Art from the animation has been collected in a new book under the title Howl: A Graphic Novel.
A New Little Women
This week in book-to-film adaptation news: there will soon be another take on Little Women, to be produced by Amy Pascal and adapted by Sarah Polley.
The Desert Oracle Gives You the Desert
Pacific Standards profiles Ken Layne who quietly started the popular quarterly literary magazine, Desert Oracle for a town of 8,000 people. Now it has gained far more readers than that as it highlights works related to the American desert. “The reason that the Oracle works is that it’s always trying to elicit that feeling, the awe and wonder that the desert reveals to you when you listen hard enough. Layne believes it’s not an accident that religious awakenings, UFO sightings, walkabouts, and other revelations occur in the desert. It’s a consequence of solitude, stark beauty, and the tenacious life that only the desert has.”