What to do when a writer dies before completing his novel? No doubt this is a question that editors and publishers must face more often than they wish. Since writers tend to write their entire lives, until their deaths, most leave uncompleted manuscripts. Do you publish what’s there? Hire a ghost writer to finish...
Imagine a world where women say only what men want to hear, where they work to fulfill a man’s every whim, and where they reach their, um…sexual satisfaction with the ease of turning on a light switch–this is the world Harold Robbins created in The Betsy. If the female-marketed Harlequin romances have a counterpart...
An aging recluse hires an unsuccessful bike racer to help him track down his missing father. An amateur hocky player redefines the rules of the game. A man grows a giant bass in his swimming pool with the hopes of winning a million dollars. These are some of the situations and characters you’ll encounter...
A woman dies. After her death, her family—her husband, four sons, and one daughter—must transport her body forty miles to Jefferson to bury her. In this day of high-speed automobiles and paved highways, this tragic but mundane duty sounds easy and quick. It could be done in an hour. But As I Lay Dying...
The fault, I confess, lies with me. I couldn’t get into Carlos Fuentes’ Destiny and Desire. Though I read the book from the first page to the last, it was a struggle. I’m not sure why. I have no doubt that it is a great book, and I know others have enjoyed reading it,...
I wanted to hate this movie! In fact, I expected to hate it. When I heard they intended to give the Hollywood treatment to The Great Gatsby, I cringed. Chills chased down my back. I went into paranoid denial: No! No! Please say it ain’t so! My doubts increased when I heard that Leonardo...
Everyone is reading The Great Gatsby now! Kobo had announced that sales of this novel has increased by 250% worldwide. Amazon has been selling its Kindle edition for $4.99, and at that price, it has been their best seller for over a hundred days. Though Barnes and Noble has not met that price for...
When I learned that Jack Kerouac’s On the Road had finally been adopted into a movie, I felt excited to see it. I had read the novel when I was young man, and I loved the sense of freedom depicted in its pages. A few years later, I tried to write my own movie...
François Truffaut had had a wonderful career. This self-educated film buff directed The 400 Blows, along with twenty-some other movies, founded the French New Wave movement, developed the auteur theory, and acted in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He wrote movie reviews, books, and screenplays. But in any ambitious career, there...
When the alarm sounds, the firemen rush to the firetruck and race across town to the given address. No house is on fire. No one is suffering a heart attack. There isn’t even a cat stuck in a tree. In this dystopian American of the future, firemen do not put out fires; they start...
