How did Ian Fleming come up with James Bond? It’s easy to think, considering the political context of his era, that Fleming tailored his superspy to be the ideal hero of the Cold War. Yet there’s another, more prosaic explanation — was the author simply having a midlife crisis?
The Spy Who Saved Me
Lord Byron’s Frankenstein
Revealed: Lord Byron’s personal copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The book will be exhibited at Peter Harrington, Chelsea’s world-renowned rare bookshop, later this month.
How Did I Get Here?
It looks like Rowan Ricardo Phillips is the new basketball columnist for The Paris Review. His first piece is a bit of an introduction into his own basketball life. We’ve brought you a couple roundball–related pieces in the past.
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The magical realists were right.
It’s raining cats and dogs and spiders and frogs and scarlet worms and fish. No, really. It is.
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J Dickens
Yea, yea, it’s Charles Dickens’ birthday. I’m sure you’ve heard, or at least been told by Google. But he’s only one artist born on this day. In addition, there’s James Yancey aka J Dilla, one of the most influential hip hop artists and producers of all time.
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Three Kafkas Begin the Day
Isotropic Films has begun filming a “fresh, modern horror [film] version” of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. At The New York Review of Books, Mark Harman offers a new translation of the late author’s “A Message From the Emperor,” which Harman calls “hauntingly oblique.” Further away still, Elif Batuman recognizes some Kafkaesque street signage in Turkey.
The End of the Hemingway Embargo
2,000 recently digitized copies of Ernest Hemingway’s papers will be transferred from Cuba to Boston’s John F. Kennedy Library – this will be the first time copies of the papers will be available to U.S. researchers. As of right now, I don’t believe there are any plans to return the urinal Hemingway took from a Key West bar to its proper location in Sloppy Joe’s.
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