For those who have emailed me, yes, I will be at this year’s BEA. I will be covering it here on the blog and in podcast form.
I’ve also heard some rumblings that Mr. Segundo may even be there. But I’m doing my best to stop that from happening.
Month / May 2007
Bury My Heart at Wounded Dee
New York Times: “‘Everyone felt very strongly that we needed a white character or a part-white, part-Indian character to carry a contemporary white audience through this project,’ Daniel Giat, the writer who adapted the book for HBO Films, told a group of television writers earlier this year.”
Hold Steadicam
A great collection of long takes. My favorite: I Am Cuba, although who can argue with many of the others, including the great Hard-Boiled shootout? (via MeFi
In Defense of W. Somerset Maugham
And I’ll fourth it.
I first encountered the stories of W. Somerset Maugham as an undergraduate in an out-of-print two-volume set that I was extremely lucky to find at an estate sale a few years later. Maugham’s stories were hardly “a creaking reminder of distant colonial days.” Like Graham Greene and Anthony Burgess, Maugham was an expert in depicting British expatriates escaping to tropical isles, attempting to find meaning through run-ins, both carnal and conversational, with these new environs. I’ll have more to say on all this, as well as his Ashenden stories, in a future post when I can find the time.
Roundup
- The Believer reveals the results of its 2006 Believer Book Awards, leaving two spots blank, authored by writers associated with the magazine, “because it would look creepy to include them. (via Scott)
- I like David Kipen. He’s one of the most enthusiastic and passionate literary people I’ve had the pleasure to meet. But his Salon essay smacks of sour grapes. It’s an absolute mistake to attribute the failure of his Big Read campaign to reader ennui, particularly when you consider the Oprah effect. Or perhaps Kipen was too concerned with his own apocalyptic thinking to consider McCarthy’s apocalyptic novel. [UPDATE: Mr. Kipen has asked me why I feel the Big Read campaign, which I think is a fine idea, has failed. It’s a fair question, and my problem with much of the “print reviews are good for you” and the Big Read campaigns is that it prescribes, rather than invites. The public is quite capable of thinking on their own. So why not invite them with more passion and less doom and gloom?]
- Due to the demands of my current schedule, I couldn’t fit the delightful Arthur Phillips into the Segundo lineup (at least not immediately). But thankfully, Mr. Sarvas has taken up the slack.
- Michael Calderone offers a heartbreaking revelation for Sontag fans: Susan was a plagiarist. (via Galleycat)
- The Frank O’Connor longlist. (via Sr. Cheney)
- Apparently, Tao Lin ran away from Levi Asher. This is a bit silly. I will happily broker a détente against such diffidence at a future Tao Lin reading!
- Terry Teachout echoes what I’ve been hoping to see happen. The time has come for stagebloggers to make themselves known. I’m game too.
- “My name is Jerry and I’m a poet.” (via Ron Silliman)
- Marco Roth is not a fictional character, but he sure seems like one sometimes.
- Quiet Bubble examines Stan Brakhage’s excellent film The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes.
- The Poetry Audio Archive. (via James Marcus)
- Is this a solution to gamer widowhood? (via The Underwire)