Disney inches toward world dominance with Fox acquisition
All around the world / we’ll go marching / who’s the leader of the club / that’s made for you and me / M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E Yes, capitalism’s favorite anthropomorphic mouse continues… Read more »
Martin Amis on writing a great sentence
A great sentence is everything. One line can be utterly transformative–picking the reader up and setting them down in a completely different place–and captivating. Martin Amis gave some terrific advice… Read more »
Germaine Greer’s 30,000-word love letter to Martin Amis and his “tobacco hair”
Last week, MobyLives wrote about the correspondence of Ernest Hemingway, who, before he died, issued explicit instructions that his letters were not to be published after his death. A seven-volume… Read more »
If you could mail a book to 2,000 teens, which book would it be?
I’m a pretty standard news consumer, in that I love reading stories about things that are familiar and relatable to me, particularly in a professional sense. And if it’s a… Read more »
Three for Tuesday: An Interview with Tim Parks
Topics discussed: mozzarella sticks, Nick During, incompetence, silliness, fear, Martin Amis, Facebook comments, George Orwell, the New York Review of Books, Charlie Hebdo, Henry Green, the Nobel Prize, John Banville, Tomas Tranströmer, Karl Ove… Read more »
Famous authors (except Martin Amis) promise immortality via charity auction
“Crowd” is the prefix of the moment. Crowdfunding. Crowdsourcing. Crowdediting. Crowded House. Which is probably because it takes less time to say than “tragedy of the commons.” All of these… Read more »
Movies you might not have known were written by novelists
Last week saw the highly-anticipated release of the film The Counselor, and since the film hit theaters on October 25th the reviews have been pouring in. Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning… Read more »
Shed a tear for Martin Amis!: Author regrets his last name
Like most of us, Martin Amis bears his father’s last name, but unlike most of us, it’s brought him countless literary advantages, subsequent fortune—and grief. In a recent Radio 4… Read more »
5 writers on Margaret Thatcher (and 5 songs she inspired)
Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first and only female Prime Minister, died yesterday at the age of 87. Over the course of her 11 year reign, Thatcher sold every government asset that… Read more »
SLIDESHOW: What would Humbert Humbert’s ‘Wanted’ poster have looked like?
Here’s an idea you’ll wish you’d had yourself: framing your favourite literary characters as criminals at large. New Tumblr The Composites runs descriptive passages from works of fiction through police composite… Read more »