Five years ago, I flew to England to see the grand opening of something improbable: an attraction called Dickens World. It promised to be an “authentic” re-creation of the London of Charles Dickens’s novels, complete with soot, pickpockets, cobblestones, gas lamps, animatronic Dickens characters and strategically placed chemical “smell pots” that would, when heated, emit odors of offal and rotting cabbage. ... Today Dickens World survives largely as a landlord, collecting rent from the Odeon movie theater next door and the restaurants (Pizza Hut, Subway, Chimichanga) that surround it. (previously)
posted by Trurl
on Feb 10, 2012 -
41 comments
... [Sarah Orne] Jewett's gifts have always been recognized by a select few, and continue to be. [The Country of the] Pointed Firs
, especially, was immediately recognized as a major achievement. Henry James called it, perfectly, “a beautiful little quantum of achievement.” Willa Cather listed it as one of her three great American novels...
posted by Trurl
on Jan 13, 2012 -
13 comments
Reading Blaise Cendrars is like stepping into another universe. His fiction is unlike anything else I've ever read. His poetry influenced the mighty Guillaume Apollinaire and helped shape the face of modernism. But it is his mockery of biographical detail and the very notion of literature that fascinates me the most. If, like me, you're not a fan of autobiography, then Blaise Cendrars is the memoirist for you.
posted by Trurl
on Nov 30, 2011 -
10 comments
As much as any book I know, Crippled Detectives transcribes the dream state, not just in its flights of fancy and logic-jumping juxtapositions, but in the mutating narrative tactics, the topsy-turvy focus (the climax is over in a flash, whereas digressions distend to marvelous effect), and especially the inconsistent point of view... I forgot to mention that Lee Tandy Schwartzman was all of seven years old when she wrote it.
posted by Trurl
on Jun 27, 2011 -
14 comments
James Frey (
previously) wants to create the next
Harry Potter or
Twilight sensation. And he's
hiring an army of anonymous starving authors to write it for him under
somewhat unusual terms. Veteran publishing attorney Conrad Rippy said he's never seen anything like it:
It’s an agreement that says, “You’re going to write for me. I’m going to own it. I may or may not give you credit. If there is more than one book in the series, you are on the hook to write those too, for the exact same terms, but I don’t have to use you. In exchange for this, I’m going to pay you 40 percent of some amount you can’t verify — there’s no audit provision — and after the deduction of a whole bunch of expenses.”
posted by scalefree
on Nov 12, 2010 -
178 comments
Djuna Barnes (12 June, 1892 – 18 June, 1982) was an American writer who played an important part in the development of 20th century English language modernist writing and was one of the key figures in 1920s and 30s bohemian Paris after filling a similar role in the Greenwich Village of the teens. Her novel Nightwood became a cult work of modern fiction, helped by an introduction by T. S. Eliot. It stands out today for its portrayal of lesbian themes and its distinctive writing style. -
Wikipedia [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese
on Jun 10, 2009 -
18 comments
Helen (Hunt) Jackson was an
author and an activist.
Her mom died when Helen was 14, her dad 3 years later. Helen's first child died at 11 months, her second at 10 years old. In 1879 she was
inspired after hearing Chief Standing Bear describe how the U.S. government took Native Americans' land.
She began to publish in support of Native American rights. 1881 brought her book
A Century of Dishonor [pdf], branded with the words "Look upon your hands! They are stained with the blood of your relations".
In 1883, she published her most famous work,
Ramona, a novel about racial discrimination set in California.
If that's too much to take in, and now you need some kitties, she's still got you covered.
Letters from a Cat (1879) is being featured at
Archive.org today.
[more inside]
posted by cashman
on Aug 25, 2008 -
7 comments
The author
Rodney Whitaker is dead, taking along with him Trevanian, Nicholas Seare, Benat Le Cagot, and several of his other pen names. Under the name Trevanian he wrote
The Eiger Sanction (1972) (which became a
Clint Eastwood movie of the same name),
Shibumi (1979),
The Loo Sanction (1973),
The Summer of Katya (1983),
The Main (1976),
Incident at Twenty-Mile (1998), and others. In real life, Whitaker was the Chairman of the Radio, Television, and Film Department at the
University of Texas. He was believe to be 74 years old, and died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow
on Dec 17, 2005 -
14 comments
The DNA of Literature. The Paris Review, with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, makes available free .pdfs of fifty years of interviews with leading writers.
posted by rushmc
on Jan 12, 2005 -
7 comments
Forever Greene. One hundred years after
Graham Greene’s birth, the literary mosaic of books like
Our Man in Havana and
Brighton Rock is still riveting. But the author "carried anguish” with him: a moralist and, therefore, controversial, Greene’s clearly-worded works of suspenseful, or ethical ambivalence, border on a delicate balance — of both gloom and salvation. His novels are
replete with a sense of foreboding, and scrutinise self-deception, sin, failure. George Orwell sneered that Greene thinks "there is something rather distingué in being damned;
Hell is a sort of high-class nightclub, entry to which is reserved for Catholics only".
And what remains is also, of course, the --
de riguer --
problem of the
biographies:
caring father,
fervent brothelgoer,
helluva guy?
Anyway, among the institutions celebrating Greene's centenary: the
British Library, the
Barbican Centre (scroll down the page).
And the Guardian just re-printed "
The funeral of Graham Greene", reported in the Guardian, April 9 1991.
(more inside, with Shirley Temple)
posted by matteo
on Oct 3, 2004 -
15 comments
"
Stone Reader makes you want to pick up a
great novel and consume it in one long gulp. It’s a love letter to literature and literacy, a bibliophile’s dream film, dedicated to the joys of fiction and the passions of those who need books like they need food, water and air."
(The Dallas Morning News)
posted by rushmc
on Aug 13, 2004 -
17 comments
What is the current state of American poetry? Hank Lazer:
Perhaps, contrary to the laments, we are now living through a particularly rich time in American poetry—an era of radically democratized poetry...In its anarchic democratic disorganized decentralization, poetry culture has developed in a manner parallel to the computer: the decentralized PC has beaten the main-frame. No one can pretend to know what is out there, or what is next. Who are some of the most notable American poets active in the beginning of the 21st century?
posted by rushmc
on May 27, 2004 -
33 comments
The Philip K. Dick Offical Site has opened: relevant not just because the movie
Paycheck is coming out this month (based on a short story of his), but because we live in a Dickian world. As he put it, "We live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups. I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudorealities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives. I distrust their power. It is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing."
posted by paladin
on Dec 2, 2003 -
25 comments
Ted Conover is a fantastic, prize-winning author. His book
Newjack is, to quote Jon Krakauer, "a compelling, compassionate look at a terribly important, poorly understood aspect of American society." In it, he works undercover as a guard at Sing Sing. You can read the
truncated New Yorker version on the site. Additionally, there are
many other articles,
reviews and interviews, and a
pretty interesting group of e-mails from "officers, their families, and others affected by prison." And, just to name-drop once more, Sebastian Junger says: "Ted Conover is a first-rate reporter and more daring and imaginative than the rest of us combined." Check him out!
posted by adrober
on Oct 25, 2003 -
7 comments
As a youngen, I was very much enamored with Ken Kesey's questioning soul and his flare for the wild. His novels provided much comfort as I tried to navigate my way through those conforming years we all know as high school. May he
RIP.
posted by Ms Snit
on Nov 11, 2001 -
7 comments
Monday is the last day to declare your intention to write a 50,000-word novel during
National Novel Writing Month (Nov. 1-30). "Dubious fiction writers from all nations are invited to participate," says organizer Chris Baty. So far, around 3,000 writers have pledged to bring 150 million new words into the world.
posted by rcade
on Oct 28, 2001 -
103 comments
