Authors, Fiction

Where’s an Encyclopedia Brown Movie?

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The case of the missing Encyclopedia Brown movie is explained by Mental Floss. Cutting to the chase a bit:

Finally, Deutsch reached a deal with HBO in 1988. The network that put Fraggle Rock on the map was interested in expanding their children’s entertainment brand and ordered a live-action Encyclopedia Brown special that led into a recurring series. Producers filmed the pilot in Provo, Utah, and the episodes were well-received.

Deutsch then did something unexpected. After just six episodes, he insisted on breaking away from the network, which puzzled them. “The idea of a producer taking his show off the air that was successful, that was so good, and so far ahead of its time that it made my career is [mind-boggling],” show co-producer Ned Kandel told The New York Times in 2005.

There’s a lot more drama in the article.

I loved these books when I was a kid. I’m pretty sure I bought them with my own money at the school book fair. I don’t remember which ones.

Uncategorized

Motives for Attending a Funeral

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The Quote Investigator relates this story. “In 1953 an Associated Press reporter described his experiences in Moscow after the death of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. The journalist reported the caustic comment of an unnamed Russian:

I saw Muscovites by the countless thousands shuffle through the cold March days and nights, in long lines that stretched for miles into the suburbs, to see the dead body of the grim dictator.

One Russian whispered to me: “They’ve come to make sure he’s really dead.”

But that isn’t the only account of someone suggesting he or many others had attended a funeral for this purpose. Read on for more.

Non-fiction

The Most Evangelical Founding Father

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Thomas Kidd, who has written on Patrick Henry and George Whitefield and is writing on Benjamin Franklin, offers this glimpse into the life of one of the lesser known founders of America.

Perhaps the most evangelical of all the Founding Fathers, however, is one whom few Americans recall today: Elias Boudinot. Baptized as an infant in Philadelphia by the great evangelist George Whitefield, Boudinot embraced and defended evangelical principles throughout his prominent career as a Patriot in New Jersey and U.S. government official.

Authors, Fiction

Did Lewis Write Screwtape in a Larger Fictional Context?

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Do you view C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters as a standalone work? A Pilgrim in Narnia has discovered something that may indicate Lewis intended his collection of demonic letters to be part of a larger fictional context.

The Screwtape Letters begins with a letter of its own. “I have no intention of explaining how the correspondence which I now offer to the public fell into my hands. There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils.” Your copy of this work attributes this letter to Lewis himself, but one early edition attributes it to someone else, a character from another of Lewis’s works. Brenton Dickieson spells out more details here.

Fiction

What If We Called It Befuddling Tales?

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From our Tell Us That Story Again desk come these headlines:

Authors

Tom Wolfe in the NYPL

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The papers of the Man in the White Suit, Tom Wolfe, have been acquired by the New York Public Library, making him “officially an Important Writer,” as Oliver Wiseman states. The papers have been made available to the public only recently. (via Prufrock)

Wolfe has not published a memoir or autobiography. In general he leaves himself out of his writing. But the career of Tom Wolfe, as told by Tom Wolfe, is the story of an outsider swimming against the tide, first in non-fiction and then in novels. Things got interesting when a strike knocked out New York’s newspapers in 1963. “You weren’t going to catch me on a picket line,” Wolfe said in an interview several years ago. “So I went to Esquire with a story about custom cars.” That article, his first magazine piece, was originally titled “There Goes (Varoom! Varoom!) That Kandy-Kolored (Thphhhhh!) Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (Rahghhh!) Around the Bend! (Brummmmmmmmmmmmmmm) . . .” Tom Wolfe was already Tom Wolfe.

Blogs, Socials, Writing

National Paragraph Writing Month

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The Millions is launching a new initiative in coordination with National Novel Writing Month (#NaNoWriMo).

We are launching #NaGrafWriMo in recognition of all the writers with jobs and family obligations, and those who just spend an ungodly amount of time on the Internet, who find it hard to read a whole book in a month, much less write one. But we are also embarking on this new program because we have found that, for most writers, it can take more talent, determination, and hard work to write one good paragraph than an entire lousy book.

Here, here to more good paragraphs and fewer lousy books.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Quicksilver,’ by Neal Stephenson

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Someone suggested Neal Stephenson’s books to me, so I figured I’d give one a try. I decided on his historical series, The Baroque Cycle. The first novel is Quicksilver.

What shall I say about this book?

What I liked: Very well written. Witty. Good, interesting characters. Excellent historical research on view. A grand artistic vision undergirding all (which seems to be to give us a much-needed introduction to the history of the ideas that eventually produced digital computing).

The central character in Quicksilver is Dr. Daniel Waterhouse, a 17th Century Puritan and scientist. As a boy he watched Charles I being executed. As a young man he roomed with Isaac Newton at Cambridge and was involved with the beginnings of the Royal Society. Through him we observe the actions of the scientists who were inventing modern science, as well as the machinations of the court of Charles II.

Then the story takes a detour, and we follow the adventures of Jack Shaftoe, an English adventurer and mercenary, who rescues a beautiful harem slave, Eliza, at the siege of Vienna. Together with her he sets off on a journey across the German principalities toward the Netherlands, during which they become acquainted with the mathematician Leibniz.

And then back to London and Dr. Waterhouse. Continue reading ‘Quicksilver,’ by Neal Stephenson →

Book Reviews, Creative Culture