“To get me through a 550-page collection, the stories must be very good indeed. These are.” When Lionel Shriver participated in our Year in Reading ritual several years back, she dedicated her reading diary to William Trevor, who just passed away. “Trevor’s writing is so perfect that you don’t even notice it’s perfect,” she wrote. “He mainlines pure narrative directly into your veins. The words never get in the way; the words, like their author, disappear.”
In Memoriam William Trevor
Tuesday New Release Day
Milan Kundera’s new collection of essays, Encounter, is now out. And for those still trying to figure out Inception, the shooting script has been published.
Hybrid Essays, DIAGRAM Essays
The deadline for DIAGRAM‘s essay contest is October 31, but mostly I just wanted an excuse to link to previous winner Cheyenne Nimes‘ “SECTION 404 OF THE CLEAN WATER ACT AND THE SANTA CRUZ RIVER SAND SHARK, SUBTITLED ‘THIS TROUBLESOME REGULATORY CONSTRAINT’.“
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Literary Culture in Boston
Boston has announced the country’s first “Literary Culture District,” marked by memorials to Edgar Allen Poe and Sylvia Plath. It also includes some arguably less interesting sites – the buildings that used to house The Atlantic Monthly and Little, Brown and Company, for example. Caroline O’Donovan writes critically about the new district for The Baffler and concludes that “we’ve allowed glib cultural ideals to occlude economic realities, and tourism tax dollars to triumph over a candid conversation about the origins of art and the sustainability of its production.”
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Wise and Beautiful
As you might expect, this grammar quiz targeted at eighth-graders from 1912 will make you feel depressed about the modern age. (h/t The Paris Review Daily)
Now That’s Will Power
How dedicated is Robert Caro to his task of identifying and faithfully portraying the character of Lyndon Johnson? So dedicated that he turned down free tickets to see Bryan Cranston’s play about the 36th President of the United States of America.
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Does this mean Will Ferrell will play Steve Eisman?
The man who directed such Will Ferrell vehicles as Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and Step Brothers is turning toward the world of finance for his next movie project. That’s right. Adam McKay is adapting Michael Lewis’s The Big Short for the big screen.
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