The New Yorker has posted a trailer for its new video series on Amazon, The New Yorker Presents, which will include a film by Jonathan Demme based on an article by contributor Rachel Aviv; Ariel Levy’s interview with artist Marina Abramovic; and a short based on a Simon Rich story, in which Alan Cumming stars as God. (The pilot Amazon’s other literary TV series The Man in the High Castle—directed by Ridley Scott and based on the Philip K. Dick novel—is now available, and receiving strong reviews.)
Claudia Rankine’s book Citizen is currently on the New York Times best-seller list—a rare accomplishment for a work of poetry.
Last week, startups Scribd and Oyster announced that MacMillan had agreed to become a part of their e-book subscription services, which allow subscribers to read an unlimited number of books for a monthly fee. HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster had already agreed to participate, which means that three of the Big Five publishers are on board. As Wired points out: “while the addition of another publisher is an obvious win for the startups, what’s less clear is why publishers want in.” One reason some big publishers are agreeing to the “Netflix for Books” is, likely, that the new model will provide them with more detailed information about readers’ tastes and activity.
Polish filmmaker and novelist Tadeusz Konwicki, whose books include The Dreambook of Our Time (1963), about the wartime generation’s postwar experiences, and The Polish Complex (1977), died earlier this month at eighty-eight.
At the Los Angeles Review of Books, Noah Berlatsky explains how expertise can limit critics.
Hilary Mantel reflects on the TV series based on her Thomas Cromwell novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, which begins this week, and explains why these historical figures “live on in our psyche.”