More news of the word

I'm always glad to see news about literature and narratives out in the world, even if they are often cast in other mediums then good old paper.

Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," a father and son bonding story set in an ambiguous and bleak apocalypse, was arguably the best book published this past year. It has just finished filming [via reality sandwich], mainly around the Pittsburgh area (which of course to me is really the perfect post-apocalyptic landscape). The movie adaptation of McCarthy's "No Country For Old Men" was also pretty stellar, so I'm quite excited to go see this when it comes out.



In other news, Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing reports that the Stormworm computer virus is now inventing fictional events to entrap people, playing on such natural disaster and celebrity fears as 'Eiffel Tower damaged by massive earthquake' and 'Donald Trump missing, feared kidnapped.' It would be a rather interesting twist if some of these events started to become true...

For Sophie, here is a great collection of links on the writing of and critical controversy surrounding the poet Anne Carson for her birthday, whose novel-in-verse "Autobiography of Red" recasts the mythic monster Geryon as a a modern photographer and lover of Herakles, and really shows some of the ways that old stories can be recycled to reexamine their hidden themes.

And finally, laser-cut typographic scarves!