Recommended Reading: An essay by novelist Siri Hustvedt on the cultural significance of hair from the forthcoming collection Me, My Hair, and I in The New Republic.
Shear Brilliance
Tom Hanks Joins Dave Eggers Adaptation
Tom Hanks and Cloud Atlas director Tom Tykwer are reuniting for a cinematic adaptation of Dave Eggers’s Hologram for the King. Previously Walkmen lead singer Hamilton Leithauser named Eggers’s book in his most recent Year in Reading post.
Which One Will Write An Essay About It First?
Did you miss 192 Books' Geoff Dyer and John Jeremiah Sullivan conversation a few weeks back? Well, good thing for you that FSG put the whole transcript online.
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On Equity in Publishing
Over at Paper Darts, Rachel Charlene Lewis argues that editors must be held accountable for the issue of diversity in publishing. As she explains it, “The fun part about focusing instead on the role of editors is that there is an answer—we need more diverse editors, and we need editors who do the work.”
New Takes on Proust
Add this to the roster of great literary takedowns. Apparently Evelyn Waugh once wrote the following about Proust: “Nobody told me he was a mental defective. He had no sense of time.” (This stands in stark contrast with the views of Aleksandar Hemon, who wrote in a recent Year in Reading piece that Swann's Way is “one of those miraculous books that gets better with every re-reading.”)
Northrop Frye… “a prodigy whose promise was entirely fulfilled.”
The latest issue of the University of Toronto Magazine has an informative, if slightly hagiographical, tribute to the literary critic Northrop Frye. This year marks a century since his birth.
Lake(rs) Wo(e)begone
It's not the first of April and this is not a joke, NBA all-star and future hall of famer Kobe Bryant announced his retirement yesterday–in verse. Oh Kobe, how will we miss thee? Let me count the ways.