Awesome: visualizations of famous movie quotes, via kottke.

What is the worst sentence you ever wrote?

The David Foster Wallace audio project.

Speaking of whom, you’ve probably already heard that UT-Austin recently acquired Wallace’s archive. But it’s worth a mention here regardless, if only because of these doodles David Foster Wallace drew on Cormac McCarthy’s face: Read more »

So proclaims The Guardian’s Jonathan Jones, which seems odd to me. Seriously? I’m trying to think of counterexamples, but I’m coming up with nothing. There’s the theory that Shakespeare’s plays may have been actually composed by a group of people, but as that’s only a theory, I’d be interested in hearing some better-documented examples of group-made art.

In his article “Not everyone can be an artist,” Jones takes a look at the rise of interactive and democratized artwork in the digital age. He says:

Some forms of interactivity are obviously good for art, as they are good for society. The more democratically ideas and information are shared, the more accessible art will be. [...] So democracy is great – except when it shapes the actual work of art. I do not believe a great work of art has ever been created by communal consensus, let alone by multiple editors. There will never be a wiki-masterpiece. This is because art, if it has any value at all, is the product of deep and often rationally incommunicable perceptions, and to try and explain or share those perceptions in a communally created artwork will negotiate and re-edit them to banality.

Participatory art is a denial of talent. It panders to a cosy lie, that everyone is equally able to create worthwhile art. What chance have we of nurturing those rare wonders in our midst, the born artists, if we claim this infantile right to put on a badge that says “artist”?

I think it’s a little premature to begin making claims about how true crowdsourced artwork will fail, as this new art from is only in its infancy (See also: “Why the Internet will fail” article from 1995–d’oh). Neil Gaiman and the BBC’s crowdsourced Twitter audiobook last fall wasn’t an enormous success in turning out a high-quality piece of literature, but it’s helped to kindle the recent interest in crowdsourced art; I imagine Gaiman and the BBC’s project will be only one of many large-scale collaborative art projects we’ll be seeing in the coming months/years. And maybe someone will come along soon and find a way to make crowdsourced art a bit more palatable.

Wild predictions aside, I think Jones has some valid points, and also some invalid ones. Read more »

Welcome to this week’s Free Book Friday, wherein we give you the best titles in indie publishing for the low low price of nothing. Congrats to last week’s winner Penny for getting a free copy of Black Boxes by Caroline Smailes.

This week, we are giving away a copy of They Is Us by Tama Janowitz. Oryx & Crake meets Douglas Coupland. An unforgettable vision of the future of America. Years from now America finds itself split between the rich and the poor. The haves live in luxury within the small regions that remain unpolluted while the have-nots inhabit a toxic suburbia full of terrorism, crime and genetic mutations. Perhaps not all that different from today then? They Is Us tells the story of one family from the poor side as they go about their daily lives. Julie has a job as a summer intern at an animal laboratory. She can’t resist taking home the discarded mutants and her house is filled with genetic cast offs. Her mother, Murielle, has kicked out her stepfather and now, seemingly from nowhere, finds herself subject to the attentions of multi-millionaire businessman A.J.M. Bishrop. Set against a backdrop of increasingly invasive technology, growing pollution and the President of the USA’s impending gay marriage (to be broadcast live across the nation) They Is Us features a cast of unforgettable characters that will stick in your mind long after you finish the book.

This week’s Free Book Friday is sponsored by The Friday Project. Read more »

I was inspired by Jacket Copy’s classic literature web movie and so put together one of my own using the simple (and free) online animated moviemaking tool xtranormal. Below is a video featuring part of a scene from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet–with the titular characters as robots. Xtranormal only has sterile, computer-generated voices to provide the dialogue, but in this context I’m thinking it kind of works.

After the jump, watch Jacket Copy’s Pride and Prejudice web video. Read more »

Vonnegut-inspired needlepoint.

Speaking of, here is an interesting interview with Kurt Vonnegut, which The Paris Review composited from four interviews done with the author over the past decade, so it’s more like an interview “conducted with himself, by himself.” Via The Rumpus.

Here is a question I would like an answer to: why is there no Jewish Narnia?

I hope you enjoyed all those great writing tips from The Guardian over the past few weeks. Now the parodies (sort of) have arrived:

From Probably just a story, via HTMLGIANT:

3. If your plot is too exciting or moving too fast, enhance realism by making your characters stop for a meal at an ethnic restaurant. Describe each course and allow your characters to re-cap the plot so far.

13. Write what you know, especially you white people out there.

From The Measure:

1. All of humanity’s power and complexity can be found in season two of Star Trek: Next Generation.

3. Write in your underpants.

From The Globe and Mail, via Bookninja:

1. Never snack while writing; consume only complete meals – a starch, two vegetables and one serving lean protein (remember that one serving is about the size of a pack of playing cards.)

2. Marry somebody who will cook this.

9. If an irate reader should break into your home, tie you to a chair and terrorize you with selections from the cutlery drawer, think back to your most recent novel. Was its point of view inconsistent? Did you at any time make use of the second person, or urban slang, even ironically? Did you attempt to underscore the significance of an action by describing it as having been performed “to the max”? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, accept what you have coming.

Aaaaand because I love you, here is a video of a reinterpretation of Hamlet, which demonstrates how the play would have ended much differently if Ophelia had a sassy gay friend: Read more »

Welcome to this week’s Free Book Friday, wherein we give you the best titles in indie publishing for the low low price of nothing. Congrats to last week’s winner Kerry for getting a free copy of Survival By Storytelling Issue One from SBS Magazine.

This week, we are giving away a copy of Black Boxes by Caroline Smailes. Julie Myerson meets Ian McEwan in this gripping novel of family breakdown. Ana Lewis is trapped by her own expectations. Her intense relationship with fellow student Alex begins to crack beyond repair when she becomes pregnant, and his subsequent withdrawal, emotionally and sexually are hard for Ana to bear. Eventually, following the birth of Pip and then Davie, Alex leaves Ana to a life of question and blame. Locked in her room for much of the time she woefully neglects her children, preferring instead to replay scenes from her life over and over, fighting the urge to blink for fear it should dissipate the memories. Told within the context of two black boxes, one Ana’s and one Pip’s, the story reveals the key factors that have contributed to this catastrophic breakdown of life.

This week’s Free Book Friday is sponsored by The Friday Project. Read more »

Artists create 164 unique speculative designs for Nabokov’s Lolita:

As does artist Jim Tierney for Jules Verne’s classics:

Does book design matter to you? If you weren’t interested in reading these books before, do the spiffy new covers convince you to give the book a shot? I’m curious.

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[Via The Rumpus and The Millions.]

Welcome to this week’s Free Book Friday, wherein we give you the best titles in indie publishing for the low low price of nothing. Congrats to last week’s winner Mel Bosworth for getting a free copy of Hot Springs by Geoffrey Becker.

This week, we are giving away a copy of Survival By Storytelling Issue One from SBS Magazine. Included in this volume are twelve short stories, seven poems, and one article, all by authors under the age of twenty-five. In addition, authors Paul Genesse (The Golden Cord and The Dragon Hunters) and T. M. Hunter (Heroes Die Young) have contributed two articles on the publishing industry and writing. From vampires struggling with identity to guilty lovers trying to raise the dead to humorous and dark tales of life, the first issue of Survival By Storytelling is sure to tingle the senses and remind us all that age has nothing to do with a good story.

This week’s Free Book Friday is sponsored by SBS Magazine. Read more »

This whole classic-literature-meets-monsters trend keeps getting weirder and weirder. The latest mashup is Mrs. Darcy vs The Aliens, which author Jonathan Pinnock describes as:

Mrs Darcy vs The Aliens is a slightly demented sequel to Pride and Prejudice, although it has been described more accurately as “not so much Pride and Prejudice’s sequel as its bastard offspring following a drunken one-night stand with the X-Files.”

Mostly, I like this idea because of the book trailer the author put together. It has Colin Firth in it, it’s in French, and it’s one of the weirdest book trailers I’ve ever seen.

If I could speak with one person dead or alive, I would want to chat with Jane Austen just so I could get her reaction to all these mashups. Given that she was apparently pretty risque and controversial in her day, I have a feeling she would think it all was a very good joke–what do you think?

For its newest book, Simon & Schuster has acquired the true life story of a…cat.

A breakdown of common problems found in debut novels.

Some tips on overcoming creative block, via kottke.

Edward who? Werewolves are so hot right now.

“Famous Quotes from Shakespeare Altered to Describe My Everyday Life.” Some choice quotes:

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose leaves a nasty stain on corduroy. A good bleach. O happy dagger!

That her veggie and her hot dog are touching the young lady doth protest too much.

Liking right now: Rejection Digest, a sort of happy afterlife for otherwise rejected stories.

Also liking right now: FictionDaily, which links to new works of fiction every day in three different categories (long/short/genre). Via The Millions.

Aaaand because it’s Wednesday and you need a pick-me-up, here is George Orwell’s 1984 as a Brazilian puppet show: Read more »