Marlon James, winner of this year’s Man Booker prize, believes that writers of color are “pandering to the white woman.” James touched on some related topics in the conversation with novelist Jeanette Winterson that we told you about yesterday.
Private Ennui
For the Viral Good
As you may have heard, Twitter went public last week, which means a lot of people are trying to figure out just what its IPO means for social media. Over at n+1, Benjamin Kunkel proposes that social media, by its very nature, cannot be profitable, and thus should be administered by the state as a public good.
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Hustle and Flow
“Notice how Malbecco, as Gelosy, lives outside of time, a death-in-life: he can ‘never dye, but dying lives.’ In other words, embrace a quality entirely—even, I would argue, a less pejorative quality, like hustle—and it overmasters you. You’re doomed.” Rowan Ricardo Phillips, basketball columnist for The Paris Review, on Edmund Spenser, hustle, and the New York Knicks.
Old World Values
Henry James wrote a number of odd things about Jewish and Italian immigrants, but is it fair to call him a racist? In The New Criterion, Stephen Miller argues that it isn’t, recalling the time James spent with immigrants on the Lower East Side.
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A Book, Not a Blog. About (but not) Adoption.
Matthew Salesses, whose forthcoming novel-in-stories I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying (excerpt here) will publish in February, has started writing a book (on Tumblr) “(not) about adoption.” As Salesses notes in the blog’s first post, his new project “is not to be a memoir, or an op-ed, or a travel narrative, or an answer to anyone …This is to be the story of finding out.”
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Cross-Genre
Back in April, Dreamworks announced its plans to adapt Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell for the silver screen, with the author writing the script. A few months later, Rowell published a new book, Landline, that marked a return to adult fiction. At The Rumpus, Amanda Green sits down with the author to talk about YA, her productivity and the importance (or not) of getting up early to write. FYI, our own Janet Potter reviewed Eleanor and Park and Fangirl.
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Happy Baby Shower
The Rumpus’s Stephen Elliott is using Kickstarter to raise money for the film adaptation of his novel Happy Baby. However you could also fund the project in a more three dimensional plane by attending November 29th’s Fundraising Party (which we’re co-sponsoring!). The party will include comedy by Eugene Mirman and readings by Jami Attenberg and Rick Moody.
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Sex and the City
Recommended Reading: On the reinvention of Sex and the City in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life to create something recognizable and true. You could also read our interview with Yanagihara.