“I’m drawn to books that deal in fragments and digressions, authors that patch together something larger from these pieces while also letting them stand on their own.” Sam Stephenson writes about “reimagining what a biography can look like” and reading Tennessee Williams: Notebooks, edited by Margaret Bradham Thornton, in a piece for The Paris Review. He also mentions Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh, which Tyler Gillespie recently reviewed for The Millions.
Reimagining Biography
Every Word of The Great Gatsby…On Stage
In this week's New Yorker, Rebecca Mead writes about the 8-hour staging of the full text of The Great Gatsby - "Gatz" - at the Public Theater. She and actor Scott Shepherd discuss it on a podcast.
●
●
Zeitgeist-y
"We get the book adaptations we deserve... We need to re-tell these stories over and over because each generation sees them in a different way, needs different things from them. We tell these stories again and again, their survival over time proof of their intrinsic value. People are writing new Zeitgeist-y things all the time of course, but we return to classics because the stories have endured for a reason." Sky Friedlander on the "Literary Period Piece."
●
●
Michael Lewis’ Man Cave
Here's a sentence I never thought I'd type: A seersuckered Michael Lewis shows off his "man cave" for ValleyGirl.tv. You can skip ahead to 9:20 for the tour. (via)
Dear Rick…
Rick Moody offers life advice to a reader about whether or not they should end an affair. Pair with our interview with the author.
●
●
The Book of a Young Girl
Anne Frank’s copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales is up for auction, including her signature on the book’s flyleaf. "This book really is the springboard from which her nascent literary career and dreams of being a writer were launched," said Nicholas Lowry, president of Swann Auction Galleries.
●
●