Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘Celeste Ng’

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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 […]


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the used book wars

by Celeste Ng

An agent once told me that if I wanted to support my fellow writers, I should never buy used books, because the author gets no royalties on re-sold copies. And while that is certainly true, this editorial in the Guardian makes an eloquent argument for why secondhand bookshops are important: [T]he best have stock that is old – an out-of-print Penguin on Imagist poets, or a Fontana reader bringing news (at least it would have been in 1981) from the sociological front – and temptingly affordable. They contain treasure, however dusty. Several commenters point out that this editorial makes no […]


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On an optimistic note…

by Celeste Ng

There’s plenty for writers to worry about these days: the future of literary fiction, the collapsing publishing industry, the economy in general. So here’s a much-needed note of optimism. On the Penguin Blog, Darin Strauss (author of Chang and Eng and More Than It Hurts You) reminds us about the joys of being a writer. These are, as the whole world knows, tough days for literary fiction. And it’s never been the easiest career, even in boom times. Rejection. Financial uncertainty. Mean or dense critics. Good publishers that nevertheless have, at the end of each quarter, to answer to corporate […]


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admissions

by Celeste Ng

Erika Dreifus at the Practicing Writer posted about this recently, and it was too interesting not to discuss here. Admission to college is getting tougher ever year, and as the New York Times reported, highschoolers hoping for an edge can now seek help from independent college counselors. But what about applicants to MFA programs? Well, now there’s help for them too: Abraham Leslie Consulting, which bills itself as “the first-ever consulting firm designed exclusively for applicants to Master of Arts (M.A.), Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.), and doctorate (Ph.D) in Creative Writing Programs.” The consultants, all of whom are recent […]


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is short the new black?

by Celeste Ng

Flash fiction is rising in prominence both online and in print. (For an introduction to the form, see Sophie Powell’s review of The Field Guide to Flash Fiction.) Then came the six-word story trend. And now there’s 7×20, a Twitter-zine publishing short stories and fiction of 140 characters or less. In fact, 7×20 is just one of several Twitter-based short-story outlets. Mediabistro notes that such sites have been springing up everywhere. Some, like Nanoism, even pay. Here are four complete stories: She shows him her wedding ring and he just shrugs. I would be more interested in you if my […]


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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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"Restoring" A Moveable Feast

by Celeste Ng

Scribner caused a stir earlier this year by announcing it would publish a “restored” edition of Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. Why? Because the original edition was edited after the author’s death by Hemingway’s fourth wife and literary executor, Mary, who reordered parts of Hemingway’s unfinished manuscript and included parts he had wished to exclude–including a chapter that that portrays his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, in a negative light. Scribner claims the new edition is what Heminway actually intended: Since Hemingway’s personal papers were released in 1979, scholars have examined and debated the changes made to the text before publication. Now, […]


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the controversy in the rye, part II

by Celeste Ng

As the Catcher in the Rye lawsuit develops, lawyers and bookworms alike have begun to air their opinions. The Wall Street Journal‘s Law Blog speaks with Marc Reiner, a copyright lawyer, about the issues raised by the lawsuit and whether it has any merits: That issue — whether a fictional character is copyrightable — is a little unsettled. It’s most readily applied to characters that are graphic, like Mickey Mouse, or if the character has been in a series, like Tarzan. I’d probably lean toward thinking that Holden Caulfield is fleshed out well enough to be copyrightable. Some folks think […]


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the controversy in the rye

by Celeste Ng

Remember Holden Caulfield? Young, angst-ridden, wandering the streets of New York? In the novel 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, by Fredrik Colting, Holden is seventy-six-year-old “Mr. C,” still angst-ridden and wandering the streets once more. Holden’s sister Phoebe and prep-school roommate Stradlater also make appearances. But does Colting have the right to use these characters–and a fictionalized version of J.D. Salinger himself–in his own work? We’ll see. Salinger is suing Colting, claiming that 60 Years Later is “a rip-off pure and simple.” Colting and his lawyers insists the novel is neither plagiarism nor a sequel to Catcher in […]




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