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:
With a new film version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel The Great Gatsby in theaters this Friday, and in honor of Fitzgerald's early work as an ad man, Erin Overbey created a slide show of Jazz Age advertisements from the pages of the New Yorker.
Meanwhile, Anne Margaret Daniel looks at F. Scott Fitzgerald's career in Hollywood. (Huffington Post)
And Emily Temple gathered forty-five The Great Gatsby book covers designed by fans.
Rounding out the Gatsby tidal wave, book critic Kathryn Schulz reveals she hates Fitzgerald's great American masterwork.
Matthew Specktor's new novel American Dream Machine will be adapted for Showtime by Dexter star Michael C. Hall. Specktor will write the script.
A new study headed by evolutionary theorist Mark Pagel at the University of Reading in England posits a “proto-Eurasiatic” language gave rise to seven language families spoken by about half the world's population, and that certain common words, such as "mother" and "thou" survive from this ancient language. (Washington Post)
With many new technologies available to assist the writer, novelist Paul Theroux argues the case for simple handwritten notes.
Michelle Legro examines the interesting life and work of poet Sadakichi Hartmann. As a teenager, Hartmann visited with Walt Whitman, was a fixture of bohemian Greenwich Village, and in 1924 acted in a Douglas Fairbanks movie. (Believer)
