Photo by Victoria Crayhon
A photographer is leaving personal messages of love and heartbreak on marquee signs of American theaters and hotels, Valerie Siebert writes at the Daily Mail.
‘I place phrases on movie and motel marquee signs, many of which I find through research but also in the course of my frequent long distance travel by car,’ Victoria Crayhon explains on the website for her project, Thoughts from romance on the Road.
Read the whole story HERE
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“If there was a straight island, a gay island and a lesbian island, which would survive?”
At Gay Star News, Joe Morgan unearths a hilarious exchange when replies to a homophobic Tumblr post turns into a dystopian adventure novel.
Read the whole exchange HERE
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Celebrities in fiction
In a culture increasingly obsessed with fame, John O’Farrell writes in The Guardian, it seems surprising that celebrities still rarely feature in modern fiction.
“While there are thousands of novels revolving around famous places and famous events,” he adds, “authors have been far more cautious about putting real famous people into their stories.”
But some have and he lists 10 of his favorites. One example:
Frank Sinatra in Underworld by Don DeLillo
The novel opens at a famous baseball match in 1951, where a ball is hit and goes missing.
With the cold war as a starting point, DeLillo tracks the protagonist Nick Shay’s life through the key historical events of the time.
DeLillo uses this backdrop to explore the American subconscious in the second half of the 20th century. A few contemporary celebrities make an appearance, including Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason and Lenny Bruce, though only Sinatra was still alive (just) at the time of publication.”
See all the celebrities in novels HERE
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Real literature is always about losers
Umberto Eco. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian
Since the publication in 1980 of his first novel, The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco’s work has come to be defined by a curious paradox, Marcus Browne writes in The Guardian – “you never quite know what to expect but you can be absolutely sure that it will will bear the unmistakable stamp of Umberto Eco.”
Speaking at a Guardian event in London, Eco said “I think an author should write what the reader does not expect. The problem is not to ask what they need, but to change them … to produce the kind of reader you want for each story.”
At another point Eco said, “Dostoevsky was writing about losers. The main character of The Iliad, Hector, is a loser. It’s very boring to talk about winners. The real literature always talks about losers. Madame Bovary is a loser. Julien Sorel is a loser. I am doing only the same job. Losers are more fascinating.
“Winners are stupid … because usually they win by chance.”
Read the whole story HERE
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Earth’s other moon and it’s whacky orbit
At io9, Duncan Forgan tells us about 3753 Cruithne, a quasi-orbital satellite of Earth. And what means is Cruithne scuttles around the inner solar system in what’s called a “horseshoe” orbit that looks like this:
The whole story of our whacky ‘moon’ HERE
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Quote of the Day
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Alma Alexander My books Email me
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