“Everybody Thinks Their an Auteur” — Film director and critic Peter Bogdanovich at New York Daily News book blog Page Views:
Auteurism today? Well, everybody thinks they’re an auteur. But nobody seems to understand what the whole auteur thing was. It wasn’t a theory as far as the French were concerned. It was a political statement called la politique des auteurs. Truffaut and Godard were attacking the old-fashioned, well-made film, Franch or American. They thought Howard Hawks was an infinitely better director than Fred Zinnemann. They thought Alfred Hitchcock was a greater director than David Lean. They were against Marcel Carné and for Jean Renoir. Personal films were what they looking for, where a director’s personality dominated despite who wrote it or who was in it or who photographed it.
Nothing But a Number — An interview with Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story, at CultureMap Austin:
“There’s a kind of anxiety, I think. When you’re ranked you sort of know who you are and where you stand, and people become obsessed in their rankings. The quantitative takes the place of qualitative.”
Does this mean we are starting to reject the belief that we will never be just a number? “That’s the big generational shift from the ’60s of ‘I am not a number’ to 2012, where ‘I am a number but hopefully I’m a good number. I’m a high number,’” he laughs.
A Slow Books Manifesto: “Read books. As often as you can. Mostly classics.”
Not Your Conventional Hell — British horror writer Ramsey Campbell (The Darkest Part of the Woods) on the mighty H. P. Lovecraft for the BBC:
Lovecraft developed his own invented mythology, at least as influential on fantastic fiction as Tolkien’s work. Most of it is set in a New England steeped in history and in hidden occult influences, although the monstrous creatures glimpsed by his characters are frequently from outer space rather than from any conventional hell.
And finally…
Do We Need Stories? — Tim Parks continues his one-man argument with everything Jonathan Franzen has ever said ever:
Of course as a novelist it is convenient to think that by the nature of the job one is on the side of the good, supplying an urgent and general need. I can also imagine readers drawing comfort from the idea that their fiction habit is essential sustenance and not a luxury. But what is the nature of this need? What would happen if it wasn’t met? We might also ask: why does Franzen refer to complex stories? And why is it important not to be interrupted by Twitter and Facebook? Are such interruptions any worse than an old land line phone call, or simply friends and family buzzing around your writing table? Jane Austen, we recall, loved to write in domestic spaces where she was open to constant interruption.