If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
For an answer I turned to my friend Erica Wagner, the literary editor of the London Times. She told me that Greene may well be entering the no-man's land between currently fashionable writers, be they alive or dead, and the enduring classic authors such as Hemingway, Wodehouse and Dickens.
Leo DiCaprio will never portray him on the screen, but the disgraced Sri Lankan American moneyman Raj Rajaratnam could well be the Jay Gatsby of our times.
Here's the nicest thing I can say about Fast & Furious 6: It's not in 3D.
Luhrmann's film works because it gives us the stunning visuals to a place and time few of us have any memory of.
The "crazy" Zelda that has emerged in our popular imagination is as much Scott's making as The Great Gatsby itself. This is, in and of itself, part of the F. Scott legacy. His work depended on Zelda's silence.
"What!" I exclaimed. "But you can't be Gatsby. He's dead!" "I assure you," the stranger insisted, removing his false beard and mustache, "I'm alive."
My heart sinks every time I show up for a screening of some big summer movie (or any other movie, for that matter) and they hand me the 3D glasses.
What is it like to finish a novel? The first time you do it, you feel utter euphoria, and you should. Unfortunately, what follows isn't always instant acceptance by an agent, an editor, or even your beta readers and friends.
Where are book lovers gathering these days with less and less bookstores around? And where will they gather in years to come as technology continues to change the way we live?
Cannes is as much about food and gifts as it is about films.
Hollywood adaptations of great novels tend to unnerve devoted readers. The effort seems hubristic and slightly profane, akin to painting a second Sistine Chapel or adding a chorus to King Lear. Perfection, by definition, can't be improved upon, and it seems suspect even to try.
In a previous blog, with tongue in cheek, I suggested that Jay Gatsby and his excessive West Egg style might be a distant ancestor of Psy and his gaudy "Gangnam Style." I showed the graph to my students and asked if we could fill in a third column for Psy. This is what we came up with.
Gatsby is all the rage just now, especially Baz Luhrmann's movie rendition of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby. And you must have some water-cooler-worthy questions to toss out because, from what I can gather, it's all anybody is talking about.
In 1926, F. Scott Fitzgerald and his family were in France, spending most of their time on the Riviera where Baz Luhrmann's movie of The Great Gatsby will open the Cannes Film Festival tonight.
Despite thriving over 50 years apart, these two groups have quite a bit in common and can give us a good refresher course on female empowerment, which is totally having a moment right now.
