Last week, I wrote about Josh Weil and Mike Harvkey’s joint book tour, which sees the two driving a Prius across America to promote their latest novels. Now, in their latest dispatch, they reflect on the differences between writers like themselves and midcentury writers like Andre Dubus and Norman Mailer.
Different Times
The Marriage Plot, The Movie?
Superbad and Adventureland director Greg Mottola is reportedly eying Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel The Marriage Plot for a possible big screen adaptation.
Writing About Oneself
Recommended Reading: Karl Ove Knausgaard and Sheila Heti discuss literary ambition and the price of success.
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Gentleman Seeking a Lady in Glasses
Are you a guy with good taste in frames and fiction? Then come to the next I Like Your Glasses: Literary Speed Dating. CoverSpy and Housing Works Bookstore Cafe will be hosting the event on February 12 at the store. Tickets are $15 (including a free drink), but gents can get their tickets for $12 if they use the promotional code “QUEEQUEG.” To see what you’re in for, read our essay on attending the first I Like Your Glasses.
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Great Sentences
We’ve been writing quite a bit about our favorite books from this year, but Brooklyn Magazine is going one step further and listing 2014’s best sentences.
American Literature in the 19th Century
“American literature in the 19th century speaks in the 21st in terms we have not yet abandoned – for all our technology, globalism, and panache.” (via Arts and Letters Daily)
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Copyeditors Required
“On Thursday, an uncorrected proof of her debut novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, with the writer’s name was misspelled as “JA Rowling”, became the muddled copy to fetch four figures at auction.” The Guardian presents a survey of famous literary typos and malapropisms. See also our own Edan Lepucki‘s interview with her beloved copyeditor Susan Bradanini Betz.