Recommended Reading: On the history of literature about housewives, from Madame Bovary to Dept. of Speculation.
The Housewife Novel
An Evening With The Millions
This Sunday, come out to the KGB Bar and meet The Millions! A pile of staffers including C. Max Magee, Garth Risk Hallberg, Emily St. John Mandel, Sonya Chung, and yours truly will be there, and a good number of them will be reading their work. The event even ends by nine, so you can rush home to see Mad Men.
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Gina Frangello on Writers Lists
Over on The Nervous Breakdown, a thoughtful piece from Gina Frangello on the recent lists of writers from The New Yorker and Dzanc: “The thing is: being a writer can kinda feel like never leaving high school.”
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Faulkner’s Films
Even though William Faulkner once described Hollywood as the “plastic asshole of the world,” he spent two decades writing screenplays there. At Garden & Gun, John Meroney examines Faulkner’s film career, including writing for Howard Hawks and having an affair with his secretary. Pair with: Our essay on Cormac McCarthy’s attempt at screenwriting.
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My Favorite Movies, Cheap
This just in: Three of my all-time favorite movies are on sale on Amazon for $6.99: Shaun of the Dead, Dazed and Confused, and The Jerk. There’s a bunch of other DVDs on sale too.
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The Best Episode of Science Friday Ever?
Public radio program Science Friday has quite a lineup on tap this week: “Science and art often seem to develop in separate silos, but many thinkers are inspired by both. Novelist Cormac McCarthy, filmmaker Werner Herzog, and physicist Lawrence Krauss discuss science as inspiration for art and Herzog’s new film on the earliest known cave paintings.” (via @maudnewton)
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E-Books and Paperbacks
As The New York Times reports, the rise of e-books has quickened the release of paperbacks. You used to have to wait a year for paperbacks to hit the shelves; now it’s often half that.
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The Best of the Best
Authors, including Jennifer Egan, George Saunders, Ali Smith, and our own Chigozie Obioma, chose their Best Books of 2017 in a two-part series for The Guardian. If you enjoyed that list, make sure to check out our Year in Reading: 2017 series all throughout December.