Recommended Viewing: A complete collection of Wes Anderson video essays. If it’s Anderson you’re after, here’s a piece of short fiction he wrote during his time in college.
A Filmmaker’s Compendium
Gatsby As He Was; Gatsby As He Will Be
The hype keeps building for Baz Luhrmann’s oft-delayed Great Gatsby adaptation. The first trailer had the whole internet up in a tizzy, and now the latest teaser from Beyoncé and Andre 3000’s “Back to Black” cover has even more people interested. Perhaps, in order to wind down, we should all check out the first cinematic reworking of Fitzgerald’s classic. Over at Open Culture, fans can get a look at The Only Known Footage of the 1926 Film Adaptation of The Great Gatsby (Which F. Scott Fitzgerald Hated).
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Secrets of the Game
Following the successes of Moneyball and The Art of Fielding, young writers with an eye on their book sales are growing more interested in writing baseball books. Fortunately for them, Luke Epplin wrote a guide.
“& other inconsiderate lilies”
Recommended Reading: “The Original Self-Pleasure Equation” by Susan Lewis.
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Brooklyn is Coming to Eat Your Children
The reach of literary Brooklyn grows ever larger, as local hub BookCourt mounts a $300,000 campaign to convert the "Bibliobarn," 160 miles north in the Catskills, into a "bookshop, event space, and writers' retreat." Upstaters, lock up your house-cured salume and artisinally sharpened pencils!
Breakfast at History’s
The evolution of the celebrity profile should be divided into two eras, one pre- and the other post-T.C.: Truman Capote.
Is All publicity Good Publicity?
Is all publicity good publicity? Are all reviews---even bad ones---good for books? The answer, according to a new study [pdf] by the journal Marketing Science, depends on whether the writer is well known or unknown. The study examined the impact of a New York Times review on the sales of more than 200 hardcover titles. For books by established writers, a negative review led to a 15% decrease in sales. For unknown authors, a negative review increased sales by a healthy 45%.