Today is “Indignation Day,” Philip Roth‘s anti-book-tour book tour, in which he’ll read via Web to audiences at various shops (PDF) around the country. (The only store in the D.C. area taking part is the Georgetown University bookstore.) As much as I like Roth, and Indignation, this seems destined to be a cold, uninteractive experience.
“Why is there no opera of The Scarlet Letter?” asked Alfred Kazin in 1992. David Mason and Lori Laitman at the University of Central Arkansas are working on it. “We considered a number of different kinds of books,” Mason tells the Log Cabin Democrat. “The shorter novels of Henry James, Willa Cather and Ray Bradbury’s ‘Fahrenheit 451,’ which I continue to think would make a good opera in an odd way.”
Somebody bring that last bit of news to Texas. As part of the Big Read, the NEA’s effort to promote classic American literature, David Kipen (an acquaintance) is driving a hybrid around the country and meeting with reading groups. Today he’s talking up Fahrenheit 451 in Mesquite, Texas.
Wikipedia trolls, keeping it classy. (David Foster Wallace‘s entry looks OK now.)
markathitakis.com 