Originally, the film 2001: A Space Odyssey included more narration by co-writer Arthur C. Clarke, whose short story “The Sentinel” was the basis for Stanley Kubrick’s script. At the last minute, Kubrick decided to cut them out, which led to Clarke leaving the US premiere halfway through. In a piece for The New Statesman an old friend of Clarke’s explores his side of the story. You could also read Ted Gioia on a weirdly predictive ’60s sci-fi novel.
In the Dark (of Space)
Talking with Colum McCann
“I’ve been writing about ‘real’ characters and placing them in a shaped, or fictional, world. Writing TransAtlantic, there was never really a plan, at the early stages, to question the line between fiction and nonfiction. I just went on instinct, and then these worlds started to braid.” The Rumpus interviews Colum McCann.
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Story from Lucia Berlin
Recommended Reading: “The Musical Vanity Boxes” by Lucia Berlin at Electric Literature.
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The Life of the Artist
“In the imposed rhythm of the day, there wasn’t the time to step back and appraise my ideas, to delete paragraphs, to question my identity. Whether or not I was a writer was temporarily immaterial, because I was writing.” Adam Dalva contemplates life at an artists’ residency. For more of his writing, check out his essay on Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch for The Millions.
David Shields on the Colbert Report
Watch David Shields on the Colbert Report last week — Colbert: “Are you the Vanilla Ice of novels?” Shields: “Precisely.”
Saunders Meets DFW
Sometime Millions writer Frank Kovarik plumbs the connections between George Saunders’ recent story in The New Yorker and David Foster Wallace’s suicide.
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“Writers have always been whiners.”
With just a few more weeks to go until the end of the world, here’s an argument for the golden age of writing – right now.
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Shattering the Short Story
Recommended Reading: Bailey Lewis’s short story at Paper Darts “When the South Wind Blows Glass Shatters and Disappears Like Rain.” “A young girl’s body hurtles through a stationery store window at top speed.”
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The Hype Cycle
Elif Batuman entertainingly muses on “hype” and resolves to “write five 5-star Amazon reviews this month of books I love by living authors.”
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