Place your bets on the winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. Esquire wants you to write 78 words of fiction. If it’s good, you can go study with Colum McCann. Book Riot has launched. We think it might be the future. Israeli writer Yoram Kaniuk is officially a man without a religion. Tonight on Turner Classic Movies, an hour of Stephen King talking about horror movies. Over at Salon, Scott Timberg’s essay on the ” hollowing out of the creative […]
Link: The Daily Beast Breaks Down Nobel Winner Mario Vargas Llosa
“Though the British betting firm Ladbrokes put Vargas Llosa’s odds this year at a relatively slim 25-1, he’s been talked about as Nobel material for years (even decades at this point), and it’s easy to see why. He has the combination of sterling literary credibility and political activism—that bid for Peru’s presidency certainly helped—that the Nobel committee can’t seem to resist.” Read More
Herta Mueller in the Woods
“So nobody could listen, we always went to the forest and proofread there,” she told the crowd. She would subsequently smuggle her books out of the country to publish them, uncensored, in Germany.” Nobel Prize winner, Herta Mueller, describing the secretive process of writing in communist-era Romania. (Via Moby Lives)
Bites: Woody Allen Drawn, A New Case for American Lit, NYRB on Herta Müller, SXSW, and more
An abstract from Dread and Superficiality: Woody Allen as Comic Strip, a new book to be published next month, is available at the Guardian. Arcade Fire’s a lucky band. Spike Jonze was “thinking of them almost every step of the way” in making his famous film. Rather than insular, is American Literature “borderless”? From the NYRB, a podcast on Herta Müller, the 2009 Nobel laureate in literature. Vol. 1 touched on Müller and her recent win last week. “Is there […]
Bites: So Many Wild Things, Gigantic Interviewed, Mr. Rochester is Dreamy, Nobels for the Small Press, 1989, Dirty Projectors at NYer Fest, and more
Wild Things: It’s Released! Did you know?? Pitchfork interviews Spike Jonze. We’ve All Been Wondering Lately about “What Makes a Children’s Classic.”(NYT Arts Beat) Ohmahgawd–Wild Things, Wild Things, Wild Things. Lit. This essay on the importance of the humanities is outstanding.(Harper’s) Gigantic is interviewed by Fictionaut. “But, reader, I loved him.” On Charlotte Brontë’s Mr. Rochester as the most romantic character in literature. Oh, yes. Reading!: the demand of literature From last week, The Millions on Lit’s Nobel Prize and […]
Does the Nobel Committee Put Politics Before Literature? Should We Care?
Whether or not it’s true that her political background is more illuminating than her literary one (I don’t think it is), after last year’s debacle we should all come to expect from the Nobel committee a fickle attitude toward art for art’s sake as well as a literary anti-Americanism. Hey, it’s their prize, not ours.
Bites: The last Nobel mentions (maybe…), libraries in trouble, browsing, new Tom Waits, Mussolini working for the Brits, and more
One final Nobel link roundup. The New Yorker on President Obama’s “Nobel surprise“. N+1 says: “The peace prize’s reputation makes it a powerful tool. It’s not always the right tool, and it’s not always effective, but it’s good to have around.” “Herta who?” Drama over the economics Nobel winner? Lit. Dave Eggers, Jay Leno, and Roger Ebert. What do they all have in common? They are all in a book talking about their favorite childhood books. Over at McSweeney’s, a […]
Bites: Chabon Interviewed, Granta Changes, Literary Doppelgangers, Grand Theft Auto & Inherent Similarities, Anderson to adapt Dahl, Real Chocolate, and more
Michael Chabon is interviewed at Jacket Copy on fatherhood and the writing process: “I think in a way, that’s sort of what you’re engaged in doing as a writer, too. You come into this inheritance of things that have been done and the ways in which they have been done, and people who influence you sort of pass along what they think is important, and what they think you need to know how to do. But over time you begin […]