Saul Bellow's False Friend, #JonathanFranzenHates, and More

by
Evan Smith Rakoff
3.6.12

Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—from publishing reports to academic announcements to literary dispatches—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today's stories:

For the Awl, Evan Hughes writes of the relationship between Saul Bellow, his wife Sondra, their best friends Jack and Leya Ludwig, and the duplicitous affair that resulted in an award-winning novel.

Following disparaging comments by novelist Jonathan Franzen about Twitter last night at Tulane University, this morning Twitter users created the popular hashtag #JonathanFranzenHates. (GalleyCat)

Today is the 85th birthday of novelist Gabriel García Márquez, and to mark the occasion the Christian Science Monitor has assembled ten quotes from the famous author of One Hundred Years of Solitude.

In light of the United Kingdom's first ever conference dedicated to sex writers, Eroticon 2012, the Guardian examines the growing popularity of the genre among women writers.

The Atlantic lists the most divisive literary characters in history.

Meanwhile, Flavorwire gathers the most powerful female characters in literature.

To determine the greatest television drama of all time, Vulture will pit shows against each other over the next three weeks, featuring a different writer each day arguing their merits. In the first battle, novelist Darin Strauss measures The Sopranos against Six Feet Under.

Letters of Note uncovers a letter written by Brave New World author Aldous Huxley to his former student George Orwell, just after the publication of Orwell's masterpiece 1984.