It’s pre-Nobel Prize speculation time, and British betting establishment Ladbrokes has Haruki Murakami at 3-1 odds to win the Nobel Prize in Literature this year.
The trajectory of J.K. Rowling’s pseudonymously written book The Cuckoo’s Nest—it was ignored and then became a bestseller after the author’s true identity was revealed—reflects how hard it is for a first-time author to get any attention… even if they deserve it.
Jason Kottke describes the trailer for Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge as “either brilliant or the dumbest thing ever.” We’re inclined to agree with the latter.
Here’s the trailer for the Alan Ginsberg biopic Kill Your Darlings, about the early years of the Beats in New York, and Ginsberg, Kerouac and Burroughs’ time at Columbia.
An actor named Benedict Cumberbatch who is apparently very busy has signed on to play Percy Fawcett in the adaptation of David Grann’s 2009 book The Lost City of Z. Fawcett was “a twenties British explorer who disappeared in the Amazon while searching for an ancient lost city.”
Agatha Christie died in 1976, but the next fall, we can expect a new book by the crime writer. The new Christie won’t be a lost manuscript—it’ll be an entirely new novel written by British crime writer Sophie Hannah at the behest of the Christie estate. The book will “feature recurring Christie character Hercule Poirot, the fictional Belgian detective who first appeared in her 1920 debut novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles.”