The new year is almost upon us, and we all know what that means: it’s time to renounce our indulgences, thwart our addictions, and give up our hedonistic tendencies — if only for a week or two. But don’t feel too bad if you fail — some of the most brilliant figures in literary history have been hopeless addicts, hooked on everything from coffee to sex to opium, exhibiting varying degrees of shame about it. It is the human condition, after all, and we can only hope that more garden-variety addicts turn their habits into great literature. Click through to check out our list of famous authors’ famous addictions, and let’s all agree to be (a little bit) better in the new year.
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[Editor's note: While your Flavorwire editors take a much-needed holiday break, we'll spend the next two weekends revisiting some of our most popular features of the year. This post was originally published September 3, 2011.] We recently read an article over at We Made This in which Nick Hornby writes that ”the days of the iconic jacket illustration, the image that forever becomes associated with a much-loved novel, are nearly gone. The stakes are too high now.” If this is true, it’s just another way that advertising is ruining our lives, since one of the things we love best about the book as art object and experience is the way well-designed covers complement and enhance your reading, and the way they figure in your mind when you remember a book. To remember the good old days, and give a little nudge to the new, we’ve compiled a list of the 20 most iconic book covers ever (in our minds), all examples of amazing book cover design. Click through to see the cover art we chose, and let us know if we’ve missed any of your favorites in the comments.
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Well, we find this sort of hilarious. The first part of the film adaptation of Ayn Rand’s controversial 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged recently came out on DVD, to not much aplomb. However, the DVDs are now being recalled, and Atlas Productions LLC announced yesterday that they would replace more than 100,000 title sheets from DVD and Blu-ray discs. Apparently, part of the marketing copy on the package reads “AYN RAND’s timeless novel of courage and self-sacrifice comes to life…” That doesn’t seem so offensive, unless you have, oh we don’t know, even a rote understanding of what the novel is about.
As the film’s producer Harmon Kaslow stated, “As we all well know, the ideas brought to life in Atlas Shrugged are entirely antithetical to the idea of ‘self-sacrifice’ as a virtue. Atlas is quite literally a story about the dangers of self-sacrifice. The error was an unfortunate one and fans of Ayn Rand and Atlas have every right to be upset… and we have every intention of making it right.” Ah, irony. If it makes anyone feel any better, the new and improved line is set to read “AYN RAND’s timeless novel of rational self-interest comes to life,” which seems about right.
[via /Film]
It’s a well-known fact that authors, for all their brilliance, can be less than visionary when it comes to coming up with titles. We understand — so much goes into the perfect title, both from an artistic and a commercial point of view, and when you’re so close to the work at hand, we can imagine how it could be a little challenging to see the issue from all angles. But even if a writer is particularly talented at title-penning, the names of books can go through as many permutations as the text itself before they see the light of day. Plus, for good or ill, writers have husbands, wives, publishers and others to weigh in, causing even more changes. Lovers of book trivia, read on: after the jump you’ll find our list of what some classic works were almost called. Check it out and let us know whether you think the changes were for the better or the worse in the comments. Read More »
This week, we were surprised by the news that Emily Dickinson was a passionate baker, and it got us to thinking. Of course, some authors have exactly the hobbies you’d think they would — Hemingway was an avid hunter and fisherman, of course — but others are a bit more surprising. With so many cultural icons and celebrities, we tend to pigeonhole them like characters, fitting them into the roles they are most famous for instead of thinking of them as fully realized human beings — but famous authors have weird hobbies just like the rest of us, a few of which even make us think twice about that literary figure we thought we knew so well. Click through to see a few very surprising hobbies of famous authors, and let us know if you have the inside scoop on any more!
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We are nearing the end of Banned Books Week and realized that there have been so many titles in the past few years that have ruffled the feathers of elected officials, holy men, and her highness, Oprah. Some have been great, some have been horrible, and some just downright racist. We’re always curious about books that are deemed so dangerous that the public shouldn’t be able to read them. Although we would be taken aback if we saw a friend openly displaying Mein Kampf on her bookshelf, we think that with enough critical distance people can learn a lot from books that uncover the wicked underbelly of society. So read on, dear readers, and tell us what “dangerous books” you’ve read and enjoyed.
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Disclaimer: we think you should go to college, if you can swing it. But sometimes it seems (especially in the media) that the college experience is just wave after wave of useless information cresting up out of a sea of cheap beer. So we’ve narrowed the whole four years down into ten essential books that will get you to the same place, only perhaps a little drier. If you aren’t going (or going back to) college this fall and wish you were, this list might just tide you over. And if you are, it’s sure to give you a leg up. Click through to check out our (tongue in cheek!) list of ten books that approximate the college experience, and let us know which you’d add or take away in the comments.
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Peter Nadas’s novel Parallel Stories, which will be released this November, clocks in at well over 1,000 pages. In an interview with New York, the Hungarian author queried, “Why wouldn’t Musil, Mann, or Broch be my contemporaries?” In honor of his ambition, we’ve compiled a list of 10 novels that could also function as doorstops if you decide to give up on them. Maybe you’ve tried to impress your friends by casually mentioning that you’re finally reading Proust, or you’re the annoying person on the train with the weighty tome in both hands, jostling into your fellow passengers because you can’t spare a free hand — whatever the reason, we salute you, foolhardy readers. Have any of you finished the following novels with ease? If so, let us know in the comments section.
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We’re a month into our literary advice column (the last time was Dean Moriarty from On the Road), and our next character to offer guidance is Howard Roark from Ayn Rand’s 1943 proto-libertarian screed, The Fountainhead. The enigmatic architect answers your questions below, providing uncompromising recommendations for you to take or leave, not that he really cares either way. (Just asking for help implies that you’re a second-hander, right?)
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Macy Halford recently wrote in the New Yorker‘s Book Bench that she happened upon the “hipster lit” section of Bookhampton while browsing in its Sag Harbor location. The shelves are loaded with the usual suspects: Bolaño, Hornby, and Rimbaud. In the comments section, a rep from Bookhampton gushes, “Bukowski and McSweeney’ [sic] as well as the ultimate female hipster Jennifer Egan (Visit from Goon Squad) and Patti Smith jumped off the shelves this morning… We just put them back!”
Sixty-three years after Anatole Broyard published “A Portrait of the Hipster” in Partisan Review, we are still arguing about what constitutes a hipster. Instead of another essay on the topic, we thought choose a different tack and encourage an alternate list for those Hamptons residents and fair-weather visitors who are sick and tired of their bookstores being invaded by scowling tight-jeaned youths and adults wearing plaid shirts. We came up with a list of novels with acceptable characters for the lily-white denizens of the land where people use “summer” as a verb and argue about ancestors who were on the Mayflower or about who is from “new” money. (South- and East Hampton, we’re looking at you.) What are your suggestions for a Yuppie Lit genre, dear readers?
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