Continuing our conversation on book covers: a look at rejected designs for Denis Johnson‘s The Laughing Monsters.
Designing ‘The Laughing Monsters’
“The Book Was Better.” Or Was It?
Did Baz Lurhmann’s Great Gatsby adaptation leave you feeling a little disappointed? Then consider Kate Kelsall’s short list of “utterly compelling cinematic adaptations” to be just what the doctor ordered.
Comic Fans
When Adrienne Raphel got to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she found a group of writers as addicted to fonts as she was. Over time, a “font subculture” developed among the poets, who settled on particular fonts as their signatures, at least for a while. At The Paris Review Daily, she writes about her typographic bent. Pair with our own Garth Risk Hallberg on the use of fonts in publishing.
The Ness Files
It’s a catchy idea: two rich Philadelphians, shut out of their family fortune, decide to gain new wealth by proving the existence of the Loch Ness monster. It’s the plot of At the Water’s Edge, the new book by Water for Elephants author Sara Gruen. Robert J. Wiersema reviewed the book in The Globe and Mail. Sample quote: “In most families, fleeing to Scotland to prove the existence of the Loch Ness monster would seem an odd thing to do in order to expiate a social faux pas and redeem the family honour, but the Hydes aren’t most families.”
●
●
You Should Move
“By three a.m., the seven of us had drunk a case of champagne, plus two additional bottles, followed by whiskey digestifs for the men. ‘They do this all the time,’ Pierre’s wife Chloe whispered to me in English at one point—dismissively, but without malice. As if to say, sure, Pierre’s relatives were lushes, but perhaps this was how life should be, inévitablement.” I doubt I have to tell you what city this all took place in.
●
●