Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘Celeste Ng’

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The less-great Gatsby

by Celeste Ng

What happens when you take The Great Gatsby and try to make it more “accessible”? This: Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter–tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning—- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. becomes this: Gatsby had believed in his dream. He had followed it and nearly made it come true. Everybody has a dream. And, like Gatsby, we must all follow our […]


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"That adrenaline rush, like an injection to the heart"

by Celeste Ng

Here’s a great essay by Joyce Carol Oates on the connections between writing and running. Here’s a taster: Living for a sabbatical year with my husband, an English professor, in a corner of Mayfair overlooking Speakers’ Corner, I was so afflicted with homesickness for America, and for Detroit, I ran compulsively; not as a respite for the intensity of writing but as a function of writing. As I ran, I was running in Detroit, envisioning the city’s parks and streets, avenues and expressways, with such eidetic clarity I had only to transcribe them when I returned to our flat, recreating […]


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Bookshelf Porn

by Celeste Ng

Can’t get enough of beautiful bookshelves, stunning stacks of stories, juicy journals? Turn to the internet for your fix. Breathing Books posts amazing book-related photos every day, many featuring old leather-bound hardbacks: And the Guardian has recently started a Flickr group for bookshelf photos, asking readers for the stories behind their books and cataloguing systems as well. One commenter, who has a small owl statue peering out from between her books, notes, “Not really a bookend, more an owl sandwich. I’ve got quite a collection of childrens books featuring owls – I think it was the first bird type my […]


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Rock Bottom to be adapted as musical

by Celeste Ng

FWR Contributor Michael Shilling‘s debut novel, Rock Bottom, will be adapted into a stage musical by the Landless Theatre Company in Washington, D.C.! The novel—and the new show—tells the story of the Blood Orphans, a once-great rock band, in Amsterdam on the last day of their final tour. The musical is a collaboration between Shilling, playwright/composer Andrew Lloyd Baughman, and songwriter/vocalist Talia Segal. It runs July 15th-August 7th at the D.C. Arts Center. And, as befits a show about a rock band, it contains explicit language, graphic adult situations, and nudity—so what are you waiting for? For more information, including […]


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Supreme Court justices: secret fiction lovers

by Celeste Ng

We seldom think of judges as writers, but as any lawyer will tell you, written decisions are the bulk of the court’s work. Recently, the Scribes Journal of Legal Writing published interviews with the SCOTUS justices (as they’re known in legal circles), and surprise: many of them appreciate reading, especially fiction, as the basis of good writing. NPR reports: “The only good way to learn about writing is to read good writing,” says Chief Justice John Roberts. That sentiment is echoed by Breyer, who points to Proust, Stendhal and Montesquieu as his inspirations. Justice Anthony Kennedy loves Hemingway, Shakespeare, Solzhenitsyn, […]


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Ann Patchett to open bookstore

by Celeste Ng

Disappointed by the lack of bookstores in her hometown of Nashville, writer Ann Patchett is taking matters into her own hands—and opening one. Reports the Christian Science Monitor: As Patchett’s been recounting in interviews on her book tour, a frame shop where she has been a customer since high school asked her if they should stock [her latest novel] “State of Wonder.” They made the offer because, sadly, Nashville’s bookstores – from big-box chains to the 30-year-old Davis-Kidd bookstore – have been shutting down. “It’s very weird to have a book coming out without a bookstore,” Patchett told The Tennessean. […]


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A Portrait of the Artist as His (or Her) Own Words

by Celeste Ng

Artist and author John Sokol creates portraits of artists out of lines from their own works. Here’s another of his stunning “word portraits”—this is William Faulkner as The Sound and The Fury: Visit Sokol’s Facebook page to see more of his portraits, and should you wish to buy one to inspire you at your writing desk, they’re for sale on his website. (Via Flavorwire.)


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Big Fiction Magazine

by Celeste Ng

We spent all of May talking about short stories, and of course novels get plenty of love all year round. But what about that neglected misfit of the fiction world, the long story or novella? Big Fiction Magazine is a new literary journal dedicated to the long story. From their website: Big Fiction was created with the goal of providing a beautiful home for long fiction that otherwise would not find a place in traditional literary magazines. We are a new journal for literature at leisure—stories to curl up with for an afternoon (or pack along on your next journey), […]


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Open a book, become someone else

by Celeste Ng

A Lithuanian bookstore has created a gorgeous campaign called “Become Someone Else” (“Pabū kuo nors kitu”) showing the transformative power of books. The Love Agency, the advertising firm that created the campaign, has all of the images up online. (Via GalleyCat.) And there’s evidence that books have literal (ha ha) transformative powers as well. A study in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine finds “each increasing quartile of print media use was associated with a 50% decrease in the odds of having MDD,” or major depressive disorder. In other words, the more teens read, the less likey they were […]




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