The Ultimate Moral Rebel
Legendary Lovers
Recommended Reading: Becca Rothfeld on courtship and gender roles in Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji, a classic work of Japanese literature written at the turn of the eleventh century.
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Take a Tour of Octavia Butler’s Favorite Libraries
The interactive map features photographs of the Kindred author's book call slips, writing notebooks, personal journals and more.
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Roald Dahl Deals
Do you live in the UK? Well, if you can’t afford Roald Dahl‘s writing shed, perhaps these two £0.99 e-books of his will suffice: “Royal Jelly” and “Man from the South.”
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“Train time is found time.”
After earning herself a “test run” writer’s residency aboard an Amtrak train, Jessica Gross reflects on the virtues and benefits of writing by railcar. Meanwhile, Alexander Chee announces he’ll be writing on the rails from New York City to Portland this Spring. You can read some more information about the program over here.
The Master and the Big Screen
Russian movie producer Svetlana Migunova-Dali is working with U.S. producer Grace Loh, who produced Hot Tub Time Machine, to adapt Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita for the big screen. They say they’re working with a feature film budget of up to $100 million, and they want A-list actors to fill out the cast.
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A Quintet of Interviews for Your Delectation
Anya Ulinich, author of Petropolis, talks to World Literature Today: “What else can a person do when she gets home after a ten-hour work day – with a toothache that she can’t afford to fix . . . – but fall on the couch and watch whatever is in front of her face?” . . . Lydia Davis, whose Collected Stories is just out, talks to Sarah Manguso for The Believer: “At the origin of the work there has to be strong feeling, if it’s going to be any good. Of course, that strong feeling can be a delight in language.” . . . The Book Bench unearths a 1978 John Updike interview with a Croation periodical, which finds the Rabbit Angstrom author halfway through his tetralogy. . . . Edwin Frank of NYRB Classics talks to Omnivoracious, and selects his favorite books in the series (via). . . . And James Ellroy submits to interrogation at The Paris Review: “I was always thinking about how I would become a great novelist.”
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