The Future of TV As Literature

Should we hold shows like HBO's "Girls" and AMC's "Mad Men" as high in esteem as a fine novel?

From a piece in the Atlantic...

It's become commonplace lately to talk about the serial television show as the novelistic medium of the 21st century—The Wire as a modern-day Dickens novel, Mad Men our Cheever, Friday Night Lights our Steinbeck. One could continue down the line, with Lost as our Michael Crichton and Desperate Housewives our Jacqueline Susann, but the lowbrow serial has been entrenched for decades now; it's the higher-quality stuff that's new. Whereas feature films were always limited in comparison to literary novels by their brief and rigorous story arcs, TV is free, theoretically at least, to use a broad canvas and unfold over tens or even hundreds of hours of screen time. The medium has been held back only by its historical lack of niche venues for challenging but well-financed work and its reliance on advertising for revenue. From the turn of the century on, thanks to a fortuitous array of new technologies and market forces, TV showrunners have finally been set loose to try to match in light and sound what their 20th-century literary heroes wrought in ink and paper.

Their success has been remarkable. Over the 15 years since the debut of The Sopranos on HBO, in the categories essential to any narrative medium's claim to broad cultural relevance—holding up a mirror to society, conveying characters' internal lives with depth and integrity, achieving new expressive styles that reflect the consciousness and felt reality of the time—TV has, quite suddenly and alarmingly, arrived. Critics and audiences have followed.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: The Musical?

Indeed!

The 100 Best Books of All Time

In 2002, the Norwegian Book Clubs gathered 100 authors from 54 countries and asked each one to list the 10 best works of fiction of all time. The authors responded and this list was created. The titles are arranged alphabetically by author name, so no one book stands above any other.

The list, care of the Christian Science Monitor.

So You Want to Be Funny

Beyond the Margins gives writers a primer on humor writing.

From the piece...


Magical Element #1: Absurdity

From Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock" and Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal"(admittedly more disturbing than funny) to Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and Jasper Fforde's "Thursday Next" series, absurdity has gotten more readers laughing than all the other comic elements put together.

But how exactly do you make something absurd? And how do you work it into your own writing?
First, let your imagination—and your fingers—fly. Turn off the editor. Turn off the physicist, biologist, chemist and sociologist. Then let your brain dance with the impossible. Most of what will come out will be garbage. But it will be entertaining garbage.

Second, and this is the more important part, take those flights of fancy and weave them together with the most mundane details you can imagine. An alien race coming to destroy the Earth? Interesting. An alien race coming to destroy Earth in order to build a hyperspace bypass? Absurd. Literary characters escaping from their books and running rampant through modern England? Fantastical. Hamlet running away from his own play to find out what people in the real world think of him? Absurd.

Dirty Medieval Doodles

Those ancient scribes were bawdy!

A Field Guide to Mobile Libraries

Fine Books Magazine revels in all things library...on wheels...or hooves.

Behind the Scenes at CBS News

The Worst Master's Degree for Jobs?

Library sciences. Ouch.

From a brief piece in Forbes...

Not all master’s degree holders enjoy anywhere near such optimistic job prospects or extraordinary pay. Getting a master’s in library and information science, English, music, or education can be extremely gratifying but pricy. Median mid-career median pay for all those degrees is under $63,000, and employment for them isn’t expected to grow significantly over the next few years.

Library and information science degree-holders bring in $57,600 mid-career, on average. Common jobs for them are school librarian, library director and reference librarian, and there are expected to be just 8.5% more of them by 2020. The low pay rank and estimated growth rank make library and information science the worst master’s degree for jobs right now.

Frank Kafka's "The Country Doctor"

The 50 Coolest Book Covers Ever

The list, care of Shortlist.

Cirque du Soleil...the Comic?

Indeed!

From a piece on Comic's Beat...

KÀ #1 will debut at the Marvel booth (#2329) during Comic Con International in San Diego, July 12 – 15, 2012.

 

“To see our live KÀ performances transform from the theatre to ink on pages in a comic book is an incredible opportunity for our entire team,” said Marie-Hélène Gagnon, Artistic Director of KÀ. “By aligning ourselves with the premier brand of comic book creators, we have produced an illustration of KÀ that depicts the story very vividly and stays true to the plot. Marvel and its team of creators have been great to collaborate with and have embraced the story of KÀ and the expectations of Cirque du Soleil.”

 

“Marvel’s proud to bring the exciting, out of this world action and adventure of KÀ to life in this all new comic book,” said Axel Alonso, Editor in Chief, Marvel Worldwide, Inc. “This is a great comic for fans of all ages, whether they’re long-time fans of Marvel, KÀ or new to both exciting brands of storytelling.”

The Childhood Homes of 20 Famous Authors

The gallery, care of Flavorwire.

A Collection of Gorgeous Comic Book Art

The gallery, care of Flavorwire.

Lou Reed...in Poetry Magazine?

Indeed. Read his poem, here.

AbeBooks Visits the London International Antiquarian Book Fair

Maurice Sendak on Herman Melville, etc

Why Read Italian Literature?

That's the question posed recently by the Oxford University Press blog.

From the piece...

But why isn’t Italian literature read more widely? Is there a continuing English mistrust of ‘abroad’? Or should we be citing linguistic incompetence? Neither is to be underestimated. Or, are we to go on the attack and say that Italy’s not produced much that’s exciting or innovative in intellectual or literary terms for a few hundred years? This is about as convincing, when you look into it, as saying that Italians aren’t good soldiers.

One starting point is the fact that classic Italian literature (Dante included) isn’t much read by Italians either, unless they have to, though they are often grandly patriotic about their great authors in a way English literature enthusiasts rarely are. The reason for both the grandeur and the non-reading is that Italian literature is written in a language that most Italians have never spoken (literary Tuscan) and prefers to operate at higher points on the rhetorical scale than is normal in ordinary language. So abstraction and generalisation win out over concreteness and particularity, the present is defined by reference to what predecessors have done, and again and again the Latin classics are perceptible just below the surface.

Pixar's 22 Rules of Storytelling

The list, care of Pixar Touchbook.

From said list...

#8: Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
#9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
#10: Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.
#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
#12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.

Why Gatsby is So Great

F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel set amid the riotous frivolity of the jazz age defines the American psyche, says author Jay McInerney.

From a piece in the Guardian...

The novel opens in the summer of 1922; Gatsby has himself become rich, and bought a splendid house on Long Island Sound directly across the bay from the mansion which Tom and Daisy occupy. From his beach he can see a green light at the end of Tom and Daisy's dock. Gatsby gives lavish parties all summer, in the hope, it seems, of attracting the attention of Daisy, whom he has never stopped loving. Finally they are reunited through the agency of Nick Carraway, a childhood friend of Daisy's who happens to move in next door. Gatsby imagines that he can erase the past and win Daisy back; it becomes clear that the entire gaudy jazz-age facade he's created has all been in the interest of recapturing his dream of Daisy. It's gradually revealed that Gatsby's wealth comes from extralegal activities, including bootlegging – although Fitzgerald leaves the details extremely vague – a fact which Daisy's husband Tom uses against him. After a showdown in a Manhattan hotel room, Gatsby and Daisy jump in Gatsby's car and Daisy, who is behind the wheel, runs down a pedestrian, who just happens to be her husband's lover, driving back to Long Island. The aggrieved husband of the dead woman, imagining that Gatsby is the culprit, shoots him while he is lounging in his pool the next day, and Tom and Daisy retreat into the impregnable sanctuary of their vast wealth, while Nick Carraway, the narrator, returns to the midwest, repelled and disillusioned by what he's witnessed. Nick, the innocent bystander, is in fact integral to the story, not just as the witness and the moral conscience of the book.

Since the novel was published, there have been at least five English-language film adaptations, an operatic interpretation and numerous stage adaptations. None has been terribly successful with the exception of Gatz, for the simple reason that Gatz presents the book in its entirety – every single word (over eight hours). Without Fitzgerald's poetry, without the editorial consciousness of Fitzgerald's narrator Nick Carraway, the story can seem threadbare and melodramatic. Telling the story from Carraway's point of view was the key to the delicate balancing act Fitzgerald performed in narrating his improbable love story. Nick is an outside observer who becomes emotionally involved in the story he is telling. Drunkenly taking in the proceedings at a party in a New York City apartment, Nick observes: "Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was with him, too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life."

Gatsby without Nick's voice, without his presiding consciousness, is like Bob Dylan's lyrics without music. Interesting, yes, but poetry? I don't think so.

Do Not, REPEAT, Do Not Eat Library Paste

It can kill you!