Ok, Did You Hear About Ira Levin?
Wednesday, November 14th by ShaneHe’s also dead. While praise and denunciation of Norman Mailer will go on for innumerable weeks, Levin will be remembered for writing novels that entertained more than anything. Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives, and The Boys from Brazil were some of his best known books (he only wrote seven), and while he may not have stirred the public’s consciousness with brilliant tomes of cultural significance, how many Mailer adaptations was Sharon Stone in?
But speaking of Norman “I once almost bit off Rip Torn’s ear” Mailer, here is a list from 10 Zen Monkeys of his “furious passions”. Marilyn Monroe, sex, headbutting, it’s all here so enjoy.
Here are two things from The Guardian that fit nicely together- more bluster about why hardbacks are useful, one of them being they make authors feel important, and the other about a Wuthering Heights hardback that sold for over a hundred thousand pounds which Emily Bronte probably enjoyed less since she wrote it under a pseudonym and then died of consumption.
And finally, here is a bunch of stuff about the National Book Awards. Podcasts, winners, Jim Shepard, and we finally get to find out why Jonathan Franzen is such a jerk to Ed.
