Wolf Hall, you may have heard, is now a TV show, which you can watch on PBS (in the US) and BBC Two (in the UK). Is it good? According to Sonia Saraiya, the adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s novel is eminently worth watching, “a rare adaptation from book to screen that makes the most of what the visual medium can provide.” You could also read our interview with Mantel.
Mr. Cromwell
Is Fiction the Art of Living?
From the New York Times archives, a 1984 essay “Is Fiction the Art of Living?” by recently announced Nobel Prize winner Mario Varga Llosa: “In fact, novels do lie – they can’t help doing so – but that’s only one part of the story.”
●
●
Time to get on with it
At Open Letters, Rohan Maitzen writes about her awakening to the chasm between an academic appreciation for books and “a more personal, affective, and engaged vision of criticism. It has been surprising and exciting to me to realize how blinkered I was about non-academic book culture, and chastening to realize how little use my own specialized reading has been as preparation to join in.”
●
●
Writing Educates the Self
Alexandra Alter interviews National Book Award winner Ta-Nehisi Coates about the success of Between the World and Me. As he puts it, “The best part of writing is really to educate yourself. I don’t want to be anybody’s expert. I came in to learn.” Pair with our own Sonya Chung’s Millions piece on Coates’s epistolary essay.
The future of the crossword
Crosswords in print newspapers are declining alongside print newspapers, but there may yet be a promising future in mobile apps.
●
●
“I Will Ruin Him”
Creative writing teachers ply a hazardous trade. Don’t believe us? Then maybe this frightening tale — excerpted from an upcoming book, Give Me Everything You Have, which you can read more about in our preview — will help change your mind.
●
●
Chocolate Tears
“I can tell you that it was his agent who thought it was a bad idea, when the book was first published, to have a black hero.” Roald Dahl‘s widow says that he intended for the eponymous hero of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to be “a little black boy.” Pair with our own Jacob Lambert‘s fond recollection of reading Dahl to his son.
●
●