I’ve been working hard, and I really need this three-day weekend coming my way. Hell yeah!
Another surprise guest will be writing this weekend’s review of the New York Times Book Review. Check back on Sunday for, I hope, a wholly new perspective.
Till then, just a few links for a happy Spring day.
1. I’ve always thought Henry David Thoreau’s Walden could be the basis of a great play or film. Robert E. Lee and Jerome Lawrence (Inherit the Wind) tried something like this with The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, though this play did not place the center of action in the cabin by the pond. A new play called Walden: the Ballad of Thoreau is making the rounds, and may be showing up on public television/radio as well as on stages around the world.
I don’t know anything about this actual play, but I know it’s a good idea. A lot of drama took place in that little cabin, and I hope this play captures the essence of the work as well as it should. I assume that the actors in the image above are portraying Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thoreau.
2. Fordham University in Manhattan (NOT, as previously reported, Fordham’s campus in the Bronx) will be hosting “Woolf and the City”, a Virginia Woolf conference, featuring insights from Anne Fernald, Roxana Robinson and many others.
3. Also at Fordham, Ron Hogan and the Mercantile Library have put together quite a lineup for a fiction writer’s conference.
4. The long-anticipated film based on Leora Skolkin-Smith’s novel Edges now has a title and a website. I thought Edges was a fine name for a story about Jews and Arabs in Israel and Palestine, but the film will be called The Fragile Mistress, and that sounds fine too. Can’t wait to see this one.
5. A website about the psychology of fiction. Oh, is that ever fertile territory …
One Response
Hi, you might be interested
Hi, you might be interested in knowing that the Walden play has been produced for PBS and is being released on DVD woth a lesson plan. The information is at this website. Greg