Doppelgängers ran rampart in literature long before the Internet made identity theft a daily occurrence. For the Guardian, Laurence Scott recounts the best books featuring doppelgängers, from Shakespeare to Agatha Christie and Philip Roth to Joanna Kavenna. “There are many ways to steal a face, and not all of them rely on the supernatural,” Scott writes. “The string of murderous misadventures in Patricia Highsmith’s 1950s novel The Talented Mr. Ripley depend on Ripley’s ability to impersonate the privileged Dickie Greenleaf. Here, a lack of technology perpetuates the hoax. In a world before it was possible to verify someone’s identity online, a passing resemblance to Greenleaf’s passport photo and a knack with signatures allow Ripley to draw money from his account and take over the dead man’s life.”
Literary Doppelgängers Through the Ages
Fact or Fiction?
Recommended Reading: A fascinating interview from The Rumpus with Susan Shapiro. Shapiro’s newest novel, What’s Never Said, is out now from Heliotrope Books. You may also be interested in Beth Kephart‘s essay for The Millions about the utility of the outward-looking memoir and its crossover with other genres.
Maya Angelou Has Died
Maya Angelou, poet and author of many memoirs — most famously I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings — has died at 86. This video of Angelou reading her poem “And Still I Rise” may serve as a good start to a celebration of her life.
The Canyons Gets a Trailer
After securing the necessary funds on its Kickstarter page, and after enduring Lindsay Lohan’s trademark version of “professionalism,” The Canyons looks like it will finally be released next month. The film, which was written by Bret Easton Ellis and directed by Paul Schrader, got its first official trailer this week.
Choose Your Own Adventure Real Talk
For the most part, the scariest thing you can do in a choose your own adventure book is choose to enter a cave. At The Toast, Mallory Ortberg shows us what choose your own adventure would’ve looked like if it were historically accurate. “It is daytime. Turn to page 19. Page 19: You have died in childbirth.”
Page 19: You have died in childbirth
Read more at http://the-toast.net/2014/04/23/choose-adventure-human-history/#crEV03DC0ezuzuuz.99
It is daytime. Turn to page 19.
Read more at http://the-toast.net/2014/04/23/choose-adventure-human-history/#crEV03DC0ezuzuuz.99
It is daytime. Turn to page 19.
Read more at http://the-toast.net/2014/04/23/choose-adventure-human-history/#crEV03DC0ezuzuuz.99
It is daytime. Turn to page 19.
Read more at http://the-toast.net/2014/04/23/choose-adventure-human-history/#crEV03DC0ezuzuuz.99
It is daytime. Turn to page 19.
Read more at http://the-toast.net/2014/04/23/choose-adventure-human-history/#crEV03DC0ezuzuuz.99
I Need to Return Some Redbox DVDs
Patrick Bateman as internet troll? I could see it. Bret Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho, stopped by Town and Country to muse over how an early-twentieth century Patrick Bateman might behave a bit differently: “I check in with Patrick every now and then—as with this article you’re reading—but he has been living his own life for some time now, and I rarely feel as if I have guardianship over him, or any right to tell him where he would or would not be today, decades after his birth.”