“In your imagination, when you read a good book, you bring the book to life.”
Reading Rainbow, remixed. It sounds like Carl Sagan on books.
"In many ways writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind. It’s an aggressive, even a hostile act. You can disguise its qualifiers and tentative subjunctives, with ellipses and evasions — with the whole manner of intimating rather than claiming, of alluding rather than stating — but there’s no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer’s sensibility on the reader’s most private space."
Orson Welles Remembers his Stormy Friendship with Ernest Hemingway
“In this fascinating clip from a 1974 interview by Michael Parkinson of the BBC, Orson Welles describes his “very strange relationship” with Ernest Hemingway, casting himself in a story of their first meeting as a torero opposed to Hemingway’s bull.” (Open Culture)
"Books are, let’s face it, better than everything else. If we played cultural Fantasy Boxing League, and made books go 15 rounds in the ring against the best that any other art form had to offer, then books would win pretty much every time. Go on, try it. The Magic Flute v. Middlemarch? Middlemarch in six. The Last Supper v. Crime and Punishment? Fyodor on point. And every now and again you’d get a shock, because that happens in sport, so Back to the Future III might land a lucky punch on Rabbit, Run; but I’m still backing literature 29 times out of 30."
—
Nick Hornby
William Faulkner resigns from his job at the post office...
October, 1924
As long as I live under the capitalistic system, I expect to have my life influenced by the demands of moneyed people. But I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp.
This, sir, is my resignation.
(Signed by Faulkner)
(Source: vintageanchorbooks)
A first look at the new Great Gatsby film, arriving this December. Good news if you enjoyed Moulin Rouge. Bad news if you did not.
Yikes!
The reputation of “Invisible Man” has suffered no serious hits over the years. Yet Ellison’s reputation as a man is in very serious danger. Eventually, in our culture, where literature is of relatively little importance, and gossip and personality matter enormously, the book may come to suffer by association with the artist who created it. Many people, with a sense of righteousness that we can only wonder at, now disapprove of Ellison.
