“If a modern film version of Pride and Prejudice were produced today, some of the main characters should be gay, Elizabeth and Darcy should not get married at the end, and Charlotte Lucas should be played by a tabby cat.” Laura Fairchild reveals her students’ ideas for new adaptations of Jane Austen novels while meditating on what Austen can or can’t teach us about modern relationships.
If Charlotte Lucas were a cat
No Moral Order
Recommended Reading: On James Sallis, criminally under-read American crime writer and contemporary paranoid, whose novels we should definitely be talking about.
Picador Playlists
The gulf between Picador and every other publishing house continues to yawn in one major aspect: literary playlists. To honor the release of Dylan Jones’s Biographical Dictionary of Popular Music, Justin Hargett put together a list of his “Favorite Covered Songs!” (Previously: the “Marriage Playlist” for Jeffrey Eugenides)
Coming Out of the Woodwork
“Suddenly, it seems like gay characters are everywhere in Y.A. literature. Or, if not everywhere, certainly in far more places and in a greater variety than ever before.”
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“Years passed.”
Recommended Reading: “So I Went Away” by Crapalachia author Scott McClanahan.
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A Tipping Point for Gladwell Haters?
The Nation expends about 7,500 words to say Malcolm Gladwell is a hack. The source of the umbrage: “a cheerful, conversational voice deployed in a perfectly paced dopamine prose that had the palliative effect of nullifying whatever concerns readers might have about this product or that problem.”