AUTHORS: Do You Have What It Takes?
It’s the ultimate reality series, the ultimate game show and the ultimate half-hour of intriguing storylines. The Ultimate Author is an awesome television program packed with entertaining, engaging and interesting events. Each week, contestants go toe-to-toe in a writing competition that tests their ability to develop attention-grabbing content.
Casting Call: June 16, 2007. Fort Lauderdale, FL.
[via gawker.]
Betting on the Tournament of Books
The Morning News Tournament of Books is alive and kicking. The truly strangest choice, however, was Danny Gregory’s endorsement of I Am Charlotte Simmons over Wake Up, Sir! “Slither slither” over a playful Wodehouse homage?
Well, nobody said this was perfect.
But since people seem to be betting on the results and we’ve recently been applying “thin-slicing” to nearly every aspect of our lives (to say nothing of our ignoble yet inconclusive efforts to get the inside dirt from the honorably recalcitant Mark Sarvas), if we were betting men, we expect Susanna Clarke to get deservedly flogged. We also believe that Jessa Crispin will say no to Cloud Atlas. Because heaven forfend that a damn fine novel get widespread recognition. We also predict that Maud will side with The Plot Against America.
So if our educated guesses make you a small fortune, you know where to send the 10%. And that concludes our Meyer Lansky moment of the year.
Material Girls, Zola’s Game Theory, Tipping Points
- Edinburgh hopes to add a walking tour to the Royal Mile.
- Three refurbished Truman Capote volumes have been released in time for Capote’s 80th birthday.
- Unemployed doctoral students may want to consider analyzing Zola. Apparently, it ties into current French politics.
- David Halberstam sinks his teeth into Rathergate.
- Neal Stephenson has shaved his head. And apparently his audience has grown older.
- Andrea Dworkin has written a followup book about the infamous drug-rape.
- The new stamps for 2005: Greta Garbo (check), Henry Fonda (check), The Muppets (check), Richard Fenyman (double check), Arthur Ashe (check) and *sigh* Ronald Reagan.
- Newsday talks with Philip Roth. The big surprise? Apparently, tenderness.
- Richard B. Wright: a literary career forged on endless awards?
- Nympho Bride: Ashcroft’s idea of terrorism.
- The New Yorker still has faith in Tipping Point Segmentation technology. What’s Gladwell’s cut?
- Madonna studying literature at Oxford?
