The Handmaid’s Tale is making its series debut on Hulu with Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men) starring as Offred. Get ready for Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale on TV
Penguin Postcards
If we were to buy ourselves a gift this year, it would be Penguin’s “One Hundred Book Covers in One Box” postcard set.
Love – Love
“When the French would go to serve, they often said, Tenez!, the French word for ‘take it,’ meaning ‘coming at you, heads up.’ We preserve this custom of warning the opponent in our less lyrical way by stating the score just before we toss up the ball. It was the Italians who, having overheard the French make these sounds, began calling the game ‘ten-ez’ by association. A lovely detail in that it suggests a scene, a Florentine ear at the fence or entryway, listening.” Whether it’s David Foster Wallace or John Jeremiah Sullivan writing about tennis, I’m reading it. Another three-namer, Jonathan Russell Clark, reviewed The David Foster Wallace Reader for The Millions.
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Tuesday New Releases – Dan Brown Edition
Booksellers across the country have loaded up dollies with towers of boxes and carted them to the front of the store. Amazon has broken into its super-secret, double-locked, chain-link fence. Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol is here. Understandably, other publishers have ceded this Tuesday almost entirely to the Dan Brown hype machine, but those looking for something (very) different can today find Joyce Carol Oates doing the zombie thing (not really) and the latest from Tao Lin.
James Alan McPherson Passes Away
Pulitzer Prize-winning author James Alan McPherson has passed away at 72. His anthology Elbow Room won the Pulitzer for fiction in 1978. He was one of the first individuals to receive a genius grant from the MacArthur Foundation. He graduated from Harvard Law school, but instead decided to pursue writing and later earned an MFA from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, where he was a professor emeritus.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Hamid; Didion; Attenberg; Chaon; Bandi; La Farge; Morris
Out this week: Exit West by Mohsin Hamid; South and West: From a Notebook by Joan Didion; All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg; Ill Will by Dan Chaon; The Accusation by Bandi; The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge; and American Berserk by our own Bill Morris. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
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Read a Book. It’s Good for You.
Good news for us bookworms. New research indicates that regular reading and writing activity throughout one’s life can “slow down cognitive decline in old age.”
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Take Two Pencils
Always inspiring: Margaret Atwood’s advice on writing.
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A Profile of the Profilist
Whether you’re a fan of the Boss or not, David Remnick’s recent 17-page look at the life of Bruce Springsteen is a delight to read and a masterful example of the profile piece. Remnik joins Storyboard to talk about the art of the profile.
The real question is: will its Canadian author be able to see the show?
Hulu is a US service, so the default answer is no. Hopefully someone is anticipating this issue, and has already arranged a license, otherwise we’re in for a run of articles on this ironic situation.