You might have seen the new Little Women trailer by now. In a series of quick cuts, the eminently familiar faces of Emma Watson and Saoirse Ronan, as well as the faces of Florence Pugh and Eliza Scanlen, flash on the screen: 2019’s wholesome and soft-feminist embodiment of those four famous girls some of us know so well from childhood. Unobjectionable, right? A new book called March Sisters also comes out this year, containing the musings of four well-known writers on their relationships to the book’s protagonists. But what about the latest adaptation of Emily Dickinson‘s life, in which Hailee Steinfeld plays a punk-rock, badass Dickinson who writes about “wild nights”—and isn’t talking about religious ecstasy? For The Guardian, Adrian Horton asks how modernized should literary adaptations be? What liberties is it okay to take?
The Art of the Adaptation
Amis Scoffs at Literary Prizes
Martin Amis told the Hay Festival in Wales that only unenjoyable books win prizes, but the Telegraph’s lede implies sour grapes.
Epic Listening
Speaking of podcasts: our own Epic Fail hits the Culture File podcast. Listen up!
Remembering Seamus Heaney
On Monday, November 4th, Paul Muldoon, Colum McCann, Loretta Brennan Glucksman, and Jean Kennedy Smith will pay tribute to the recently deceased poet with a free, Off-Broadway production entitled Remembering Seamus: A Celebration of the Life and Work of Seamus Heaney.
DARE, Hear Americans Talk
In 1965, researchers set out in campers to hear Americans talk. The Dictionary of American Regional English is a road trip of the mind. (Via Arts & Letters Daily.)
Benefits Does Have a Nicer Ring to It
In its treatment of the poor, Britain may be “going back to the Middle Ages,” says Booker repeat winner Hilary Mantel. Indeed, she explains, “In some respects … Cromwell lived in a more enlightened time.” And she’s not the only high profile UK author to come to the side of government welfare these days. In a two–part interview for The Daily Show, J.K. Rowling notes that she couldn’t have written her first books without government “benefits.”