Year in Reading alumnus Jonathan Safran Foer and Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman have been exchanging emails for over a decade. Over at The New York Times Magazine, they share their recent correspondence on how things have changed since the beginning of their friendship.
Friends Forever
Hitchens Memoir Moved
The Christopher Hitchens memoir, Mortality, a collection of essays based around the final pieces he wrote for Vanity Fair, now has an official U.S. release date of September, and the U.K. release date has been moved to coincide with that.
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Suspenseful Degree Program
City University in London is launching the UK’s “first creative writing masters dedicated to crime and thriller novels.” The degree program will allow 12 to 14 students to focus on crime writing, the UK’s second biggest genre, which raked in £87.6m in 2011.
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Short Stories for Sale
Intellectual Politics: A Book Review
Los Angeles Review of Books managing editor Evan Kindley reviews Michael Szalay’s Hip Figures: A Literary History of the Democratic Party, and says it “reminds us of a time, not long ago, when literary intellectuals set great store by mainstream political parties, and vice versa.”
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Dmitry Samarov on Writers No One Reads
Hack author Dmitry Samarov is this week’s guest blogger at Writers No One Reads (which we’ve mentioned before). In his first post, Samarov takes a look at the work of Willard Motley, who grew up in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood in the early 1900s, and is most well-known for his 1947 bestseller, Knock On Any Door.
Jenny Tinghui Zhang on Tuning Out Publishing Noise
Jenny Tinghui Zhang discusses her debut novel and shares advice for emerging writers trying to finish their books.
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Hilarious. Foer is arguably the worst writer of his generation, but he is unquestionably the most pretentious. Imagine a human being who would do this:
“For the last half a year, we have played a game at dinner called the Wonder Line. If one of the kids can tell me something that generates the experience of wonder — the cocked head, slight nod, raised eyebrow and muttered ‘hmmm …’ — we call it ‘clearing the Wonder Line.”
And then imagine a human being who would be so gol’ darn proud of doing this that he humble-brags about it in the New York Times.
“Imagine a human being who would do this…”
Yes but isn’t it heartwarming when fading propaganda assets come together to generate more… propaganda…? (and *when* is Woody going to put these two adorable kids in a movie…?)