Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘adaptations’

Essays |

Writing the Great American Novel Video Game

by Michael Rudin

For some time I was one of few standing firmly in both camps—writer and gamer, fiction-fiend and pixel-popper. But the innovative nature of Next-Gen gaming, with its leaps in technology and massive install-base, means games have developed new depth–and the future of gaming promises to look a lot more like literature than flight simulators. This is, in many ways, the rise of a new novel. Like its lexicographic predecessor, the pixilated form revels in moral ambiguity, character motivations, conflicts between free will and fate.


Shop Talk |

(Even) more on book trailers…

by Celeste Ng

We’ve talked about book trailers on FWR before (see below)–and it seems they’re gaining an even larger (and more interesting) presence…one aspiring to an adaptation genre of its own. GalleyCat reports that the trailer for Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters will be shown in movie theatres around the country. That’s the book trailer, people. On the big screen. Meanwhile, the 1993 novel Going West by Maurice Gee inspired the New Zealand Book Council to create this absolutely jaw-dropping short film. Part book trailer, part adaptation, it’s a bona fide work of art in its own right. The council’s website […]


Shop Talk |

The WSJ's Interview with Cormac McCarthy

by Celeste Ng

So you didn’t win the auction for Cormac McCarthy’s typewriter. (Ahem–if you did, we know a great literary site that you could support as well!) For everyone else without a spare $254,500, we offer this interview with McCarthy in theWall Street Journal, available online for free. In the wide-ranging conversation, McCarthy discusses the film adaptation of his novel The Road, how his relationship with his 11-year-old son influences his work, the violence in his work, and much more: WSJ: Does this issue of length apply to books, too? Is a 1,000-page book somehow too much? CM: For modern readers, yeah. […]


Shop Talk |

Literary Gifts #3: MotherReader's 105 Ways to Give a Book

by Celeste Ng

Books always make great presents, but just wrapping it up and handing it over is a little… blah. MotherReader offers a list of 105 books paired with complementary gifts. Ideas are grouped by recipient’s age range; many are aimed at kids and could be great ways to encourage budding readers. Here’s a sampling of my favorites: 3. Give a book with a movie theater gift card to see the upcoming film. 10. Give an interesting, insightful book with a restaurant gift card and a date to discuss the book together over a meal. 44. Everyone needs Mo Willems’ book Don’t […]


Reviews |

We Are the Friction: Illustration vs. Short Fiction (edited by Sing Statistics)

by Lee Thomas

Even the idea itself is intriguing: pair twelve international illustrators and short fiction writers, press go, see what happens. The slim, wonderfully designed collection We Are the Friction sets the stage for unexpected relationships. Following their 2008 collaboration, I Am the Friction, the masterminds behind the concept are designer Jez Burrows and illustrator Lizzy Stewart, who together form Sing Statistics. Both Burrows and Stewart are based in Edinburgh, but the two-dozen writers and illustrators in this anthology reside across the globe – from Toronto to Kansas City to Barcelona. The cover promises a veritable garden of earthly delights: “5 Giant Animals, 63 Expletives, 6 Instances of the Ocean,” and “1 Sentient Muffin” among them. Let’s begin with that muffin.


Shop Talk |

Wild Things Roundup

by Celeste Ng

Maurice Sendak’s picture book Where the Wild Things Are is nearly 50 years old, but the release of Spike Jonze’s film adaptation has sparked a resurgence of critical interpretations of the story. A sampling: On the Oxford University Press blog, philosophy professor Stephen T. Asma ties our love for Where the Wild Things Are to our fascination with other monsters–“zombies, vampires, and serial killers”: As the movie’s trailer reminds us, “Inside all of us is a wild thing.” And in our therapeutic era, we generally accept that it is good and healthy to visit our wild things –to let them […]


Reviews |

Livability by Jon Raymond, and Wendy and Lucy

I saw Wendy and Lucy this past April, and there wasn’t any sound for the first ten minutes. Well, not no sound; there were the suggestions of breathing, some ambient rustling. The whispers filling the theater were mainly curious—could this be some new super-indie technique, perfected by director Kelly Reichardt for her second film? It turned out to be a technical mistake, and I found out what I missed when I read Jon Raymond’s “Train Choir,” the closing piece in his first collection, Livability, and the story on which Reichardt’s film is based.


Shop Talk |

The Lovely Bones trailer

by Celeste Ng

Paramount has just revealed the trailer for the film adaptation of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. The film, directed by Peter Jackson, stars Mark Wahlberg, Susan Sarandon, Rachel Weisz, and Saoirse Ronan (Briony in the movie version Atonement, and no stranger to literary adaptations). I had a hard time imagining how this book would be made into a movie, and the trailer reminded me–strangely enough–of the Harry Potter films: a human world and a magical world running in parallel; fantastical CGI effects, like a giant rose blooming underwater; scary woods, and the hunt for a Very Bad Man. Meanwhile, the […]


Shop Talk |

Symphony Space: Selected Shorts

by Celeste Ng

NY-based (or visiting) writers: More short story love, this time with actors: Symphony Space presents “Selected Shorts: A Celebration of the Short Story,” in which “spellbinding short stories by established and emerging writers take on a new life when they are performed by stars of the stage and screen.” Hosted by Isaiah Sheffer, performances often focus on a theme; for example, “Living Life to the Fullest” included Neil Patrick Harris reading “The Canoeists” by Rick Bass and Mia Dillon reading Pam Houston’s “How To Talk to Hunter.” And the series features plenty of stories by young/emerging writers, too, including Karen […]




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