literature

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Hollywood Is Fatal to Fabulous Books
 Hollywood Is 
 Fatal to Fabulous Books 
OPINION
Feb 17, 2009 6:43 PM CST

Hollywood Is Fatal to Fabulous Books

(Newser) - Willing Davidson knows his complaint isn't original. But he can't help asking in Slate, "Why does Hollywood take our favorite novels and turn them into crap?" In Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road, readers see their own hopes within those of his characters; in the movie, character replaces plot "and...

Ian McEwan: I Sheltered Rushdie After 1989 Fatwa

Novelist reveals how he protected his friend

(Newser) - Twenty years after the Iranian leadership declared a death sentence on Salman Rushdie, fellow novelist Ian McEwan reveals that he sheltered the writer in a house in the English countryside. In a long profile of McEwan in the New Yorker, the novelist describes how the pair listened to news of...

Bad Book? Vent Your Fury on Amazon
Bad Book? Vent
Your Fury on Amazon
OPINION
Feb 9, 2009 10:30 AM CST

Bad Book? Vent Your Fury on Amazon

One-star reviews offer relief from literary anxiety

(Newser) - Anne Enright's The Gathering won the prestigious Booker Prize and dozens of adulatory reviews, but Cynthia Crossen of the Wall Street Journal didn't find much to admire in the bleak story of a dysfunctional family. Luckily, there's a place to vent such disappointment, she writes: amid Amazon's readers' reviews, where...

Rowling Assures French: 'Voldemort' Not a Slight

(Newser) - JK Rowling cleared up any fuss about her Harry Potter villain’s French name today, as she accepted that country’s Legion d’honneur for her contribution to the arts, Reuters reports. “I can assure you that the decision did not come from any anti-French sentiment,” Rowling said...

Updike Mused on Own 'Overdue Demise'

3-stanza poem to be published this year

(Newser) - John Updike considered his own mortality, and did so with his usual wry wit. The evidence is in one of his last poems called "Requiem," writes the New York Post. It begins: "It came to me the other day: Were I to die, no one would...

Updike: An Author 'Hoping to Talk to America'
 Updike: An Author 
 'Hoping to Talk to America' 
APPRECIATION
Jan 27, 2009 3:44 PM CST

Updike: An Author 'Hoping to Talk to America'

Superlatives hardly lacking in wake of writer's death at 76

(Newser) - John Updike, who died today at 76, was many things: Bob Ryan, in the Boston Globe, calls him the author of the “most spellbinding essay ever written about baseball.” For Carolyn Kellogg, in the Los Angeles Times, the first line of his story A&P displays a “...

More Americans Reading Fiction: NEA

Study indicates literary decline might be reversing

(Newser) - The percentage of Americans reading fiction has increased for the first time in years, a new study by the National Endowment for the Arts indicates. The reported 50.2% of the population who picked up a book for pleasure marks a turnaround from a statistical decline in literary culture over...

Web Novels Let Readers Drive the Plot

Weekly installments end with a choice

(Newser) - Fantasy fans who’d like a role in the action can turn to literature’s latest incarnation: the online Web-novel, or wovel, NPR reports. Readers can click and read a chapter each week. Then, “at the end of every installment, there's a binary plot branch point with a vote...

Still Searching for JD Salinger
Still Searching for JD Salinger
Dec 31, 2008 10:52 AM CST

Still Searching for JD Salinger

As the reclusive author turns 90, we're left to wonder who he was; will he publish again?

(Newser) - JD Salinger turns 90 tomorrow, but the milestone brings no new clarity to the life of the mysterious recluse, who has maintained four decades of closely-guarded silence. The New York Times does some close reading of the literary icon's work in a search for clues. The most critical questions: Has...

Hollywood, Lay Off the 'Burbs
 Hollywood, Lay Off the 'Burbs 
analysis
Dec 28, 2008 2:00 PM CST

Hollywood, Lay Off the 'Burbs

Hating on the suburbs is the cheapest, easiest move in art

(Newser) - Revolutionary Road, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, “is the latest entry in a long stream of art that portrays the American suburbs as the physical correlative to spiritual and mental death,” Lee Siegel writes in the Washington Post. Everyone from Allen Ginsberg to Sylvia Plath has given...

Recession Shreds Publishing Industry; Is Literature Next?

Until outfits learn to cope with digital challenges, it'll be a tough go for writers

(Newser) - The publishing industry has been battered in the past month, as large houses hemorrhage editors and consolidate divisions, leading some to wonder if literary publishing will ever be the same, Jason Boog writes on Salon. The list of ills is long: too-high advances paid to a dwindling number of sure...

Japan Fetes Genji , World's First Novel, at 1,000
Japan Fetes Genji, World's
First Novel, at 1,000
Glossies
Dec 20, 2008 6:39 AM CST

Japan Fetes Genji, World's First Novel, at 1,000

Three very different English translations available to get you caught up

(Newser) - Japan is celebrating the 1,000th birthday of The Tale of Genji, a story penned by a woman in an imperial court that is widely regarded as the first modern novel, the Economist reports. The chronicle of an aristocratic aesthete’s sexual adventures is many things to many readers, including...

García Márquez Back at Work on New Novel

(Newser) - Two years after announcing that he had given up writing, Gabriel García Márquez is at work on a new novel, says a close friend. Fellow writer Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza confirmed rumors that the Nobel Prize-winning 82-year-old is working on a love story, the Guardian reports.

Morrison Tops Times 10 Best Books List

NY Times names its top 10 for 2008

(Newser) - Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison's most recent novel and nonfiction books about two wars feature on the New York Times list of the 10 best books of the year. They include:
  • A Mercy: Morrison's tale of 17th-century slaves and masters is "part Faulknerian puzzle, part dream-song."
  • 2666: Chilean author
...

Jane Austen Museum Bans Fans' Ashes

Devotees were using her garden as their final resting place

(Newser) - The caretakers of Jane Austen's estate in England have issued an unusual plea to her devoted fans: Please stop having your ashes scattered in her garden. Museum representatives say they understand the passion but can't allow the practice. “It is distressing for visitors to see mounds of human ash,...

Top Foreign Fiction of 2008
 Top Foreign Fiction of 2008 
OPINION
Dec 2, 2008 4:40 PM CST

Top Foreign Fiction of 2008

Pair of Spanish-language works highlight NPR list

(Newser) - Of 340 new works of foreign fiction and poetry translated for US audiences this year, NPR has culled five of the best into a list:
  • Senselessness, by Horacio Castellanos Moya: A Latin American freelance writer is hired by the Catholic Church to edit sinister documents in this compact dark comedy.
...

Their Book Deals Snag Big $$$
 Their Book Deals Snag Big $$$ 
Nov 17, 2008 5:47 PM CST

Their Book Deals Snag Big $$$

(Newser) - Literary agent Dan Strone oversaw two multimillion-dollar celebrity book deals last week, stunning the publishing industry, the New York Observer reports. He scored $2.5 million for a Sarah Silverman book and drew bids topping $7 million for a Jerry Seinfeld title. Both were auctioned without a proposal. “I...

Traces of the Real Crusoe Unearthed

Character was based on marooned Scotsman

(Newser) - A dig has unearthed remnants of the real-life Robinson Crusoe’s stay on an island west of Chile, the BBC reports. Daniel Defoe’s character is said to have been based on a sailor who was rescued from the island in 1709. Traces of his four-year presence include post-holes from...

Mystery Writer Tony Hillerman Dead at 83

Penned police novels infused with Navajo culture

(Newser) - Bestselling author Tony Hillerman died yesterday at 83 of pulmonary failure, the AP reports. He was known for his mystery novels, which featured two Navajo policemen with distinct views on their people, constantly balancing the Navajo world with the Anglo one. A onetime journalist, he found success with Skinwalkers in...

Writer Marked by Mob to Flee Italy

Mob wants author dead by Christmas

(Newser) - A best-selling author who has become a target of Italian mobsters is fleeing Italy, reports the Guardian. Writer Roberto Saviano, 28, has spent the last two years as a virtual prisoner in army barracks, surrounded by bodyguards protecting him from a Neapolitan mob family. Saviano's book, Gomorra, now an acclaimed...

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