Tolkien‘s The Lord of the Rings: “a pernicious confirmation of the values of a morally bankrupt middle class”? Michael Moorcock thinks so.
The Anti-Tolkien
Zadie Smith’s Headed to Hollywood
It's a big season for Zadie Smith. While most of us eagerly await the publication of her latest book, NW, the author's earlier work, On Beauty, is set to become a feature film. Smith's first book to be dramatized on film was White Teeth, a UK mini-series from 2002 based on her book of the same name. (And available online if you have Hulu Plus.)
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Quiet Creature
"João Gilberto Noll frustrates attempts to foresee the plot or to craft stories as they are traditionally understood and written. The series of events that appear in them are as tenuously linked into a broader narrative as those of a dream." An interview with Noll translator Adam Morris.
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One Darkness to Another
"It’s the marriage of one kind of darkness to another... the black storm cloud of Neel’s pen is well suited to Dostoyevsky’s questions of God, reason, and doubt." On Alice Neel's illustrations for The Brothers Karamazov, from The Paris Review. Pair with our own Kevin Hartnett's much lighter take on the novel, "Reading The Brothers Karamazov: Even a Toddler Knows a Funny Name When He Hears One."
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We All Pay It Off in the Next Five Millenia
Attention all victims of debt: the author of the well-named Debt: The First 5000 Years, David Graeber, is now taking your questions on Reddit.
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Labyrinths
Recommended recommendations: "Five books that are also labyrinths," including Italo Calvino's The Castle of Crossed Destinies and Lily Hoang's Changing.
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Curiosities
It's good to see James Wood covering Richard Price in The New Yorker; and even better to hear Price himself on Fresh Air.And also from The New Yorker, may we recommend Dan Chiasson's wonderful essay on Frank O'Hara?Luc Sante's blog pretty much has to be good.Derek, the guy who got both Max and Garth started blogging in the first place, is taking part in a big group blog at the Washington Post covering the Nationals baseball team and its new stadium.With features like this reconsideration of The Gnostic Gospels, the New York Sun is quietly building what may be the country's best books section."Growing Up Radical: An Interview with Peter Carey" (via scott)"On Magic Feelism" - n+1 considers Kevin Brockmeier's The View from the Seventh LayerBoris Kachka profiles Jhumpa Lahiri in New YorkSurreal: "Garfield" minus Garfield. Alternatively, "Garfield" without Garfield's thought bubbles.Nobody knows if the Kindle is a hit, AP says, but something is happening.A book graveyard in Russia.Languagehat's specialty: a thoroughly edifying investigation of a phrase pulled out of thin air.American Book Review has developed their own lists of 100 Best Last Lines from Novels (PDF) and 100 Best First Lines from NovelsThe Boston Globe argues that Bringing Down the House, the basis for the new movie 21, is not a work of nonfiction.
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