Set to Disgrace and Disappoint
The Elegant Variation links to trailers for upcoming film adaptations of J.M. Coetzee’s
Disgrace and Michael Chabon’s
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, from which the novel’s central gay character is curiously omitted.
20 Mar 2009Elmo, Jon Stewart, Judy Blume to the rescue
Several major U.S. publishers have joined forces to combat the current instability of the industry. The result: a
public service announcement in which a somewhat puzzling assortment of celebrities (John Lithgow?!) and authors convince us that books make great gifts.
13 Dec 2008 Franzen and Ferris pick their faves
Keith Gessen,
Sana Krasikov, and Nam Le are among the
five promising writers under 35 chosen by previous National Book Award winners and finalists. (Oh, and since there's room, the other two are Matthew Eck and Fiona Maazel.) The new generation will be celebrated at a kick-off party for National Book Awards week in November.
27 Sep 2008 Sizing up Kay Ryan
America’s new poet laureate Kay Ryan is assessed by
Slate, and it looks like the Library of Congress is in for some serious assonance, heaps of internal rhyme, and some good ol' juxtaposition of unlike things.
30 Jul 2008 Booker by Numbers
The Man Booker prize longlist was announced yesterday, and includes
one heavyweight, five
first-time novelists, and a
post-9/11 novel about cricket. At least two predicted favourites were overlooked.
30 Jul 2008 Eat Your Heart Out, Nadine Gordimer
Voting for the Best of the Booker is well under way and if you’re still fretting over which candidate deserves your support you may want to consider this: only one of the nominees makes a cameo in
Scarlett Johansson’s latest music video. Watch for Rushdie after the three-minute mark.
17 Jun 2008 Walcott sics Mongoose on Naipaul
Nobel prize-winning poet Derek Walcott unleashed The Mongoose — an attack on his longtime literary rival VS Naipaul in verse, complete with caustic rhyming couplets — at the Calabash Literary Fesitval in Jamaica last week. Looks like the feud, throughout which the writers “discreetly sniped at one another in print and in interviews,” remains, at its core, quite lame.
But interesting, regardless.
02 Jun 2008 Houellebecq’s “old slut of a mother” Spits Back
Lucie Ceccaldi, 83-year-old mother of French poet and novelist Michel Houellebecq has written a book,
L’Innocent, in which Ceccaldi gives
her version of her life. It's being touted as a retaliation to Houellebecq’s not-so-thinly-veiled (and not-so-flattering) portrait of her in
The Elementary Particles. Read the
full article at The Guardian.
28 Apr 2008 Junot Diaz wins Pulitzer
The literary prize was awarded to Diaz, a Dominican from New Jersey for his highly anticipated first novel,
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, about a Dominican nerd from New Jersey. Read a recycled interview with the author on
Slate and Pulitzer cynicism
here.
09 Apr 2008 Zadie Takes Judging Seriously
In an address to readers of
The Willesden Herald, Zadie Smith explains that none of the hundreds of stories submitted to the web site’s annual short story competition are deserving of the $5000 prize. She stresses that the sole criterion of the contest is quality (see also: greatness), but future participants take note: “We also welcome all those whose literary sympathies lie with Rimbaud or Capote, with Irving Rosenthal or Proust, with Svevo or Trocchi, with Ballard or Bellow, Denis Cooper or Diderot, with Coetzee or Patricia Highsmith, with street punks or Elizabethans, with Southern Gothic or with Nordic Crime, with Brutalists or Realists, with the Lyrical or the Encyclopedic, in the ivory tower, or amongst the trash that catches in the gutter.” Next year should be a cinch.
11 Feb 2008 
