Arts

Decade Later And Across An Ocean, A Novel Gets Its Due

NPR Staff — Sun, 19 May 2013 20:09:00 +0000

Sometimes you need some distance to appreciate a classic.

That was certainly the case for John Williams' novel Stoner. When it was originally published in 1965, the only publication to mention the book at all was The New Yorker, in its "Briefly Noted" column. The novel received admiring reviews over the years, but sold just 2,000 copies and was almost immediately forgotten.

Fast forward to today and the book is experiencing a renaissance of sorts.

The Movie Katie Aselton Has 'Seen A Million Times'

editor — Sun, 19 May 2013 20:09:00 +0000

The weekends on All Things Considered series Movies I've Seen A Million Times features filmmakers, actors, writers and directors talking about the movies that they never get tired of watching.

Actor-director Katie Aselton's credits include the TV show The League, and the films Jeff, Who Lives At Home and Black Rock— currently in theaters and on VOD.

Unacceptable Anger From 'The Woman Upstairs'

editor — Sun, 19 May 2013 20:09:00 +0000
The main character of Claire Messud's novel, The Woman Upstairs, is a good woman. Nora is a 37-year-old elementary school teacher — responsible, kind and reliable. She is also very, very angry.
Her dreams of being an artist have been suppressed; she is seething inside with rage and resentment. But she keeps her anger in until she meets another woman who has everything she does not: a husband, a child and a successful art career. And then everything begins to unravel.

Giant Renaissance Food People Descend Upon New York

editor — Sun, 19 May 2013 12:05:00 +0000
It takes a lot of chutzpah to reduce one of the most powerful men on Earth to a pile of fruits and vegetables.
Luckily for art lovers, Giuseppe Arcimboldo had nerve to spare.
Arcimboldo created this unorthodox produce portrait of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II back in 1590. By that time, the Italian artist had been painting for the emperor and his powerful Habsburg family for more than 25 years, so presumably, they'd grown used to his visual jokes.

Ghost Ships, Murders, Bird Attacks: Stories To Keep You Awake

Ethan Rutherford — Sun, 19 May 2013 11:03:00 +0000
Ethan Rutherford is the author of The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories.
I'd seen the movies before reading the stories — Nicolas Roeg's masterful version of "Don't Look Now" featuring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie; and Alfred Hitchcock's strangely flat-footed and clunky version of "The Birds" — so I thought I knew what to expect from Daphne du Maurier's fiction. I was, in fact, a little bored by the prospect of reading these stories, since I'd already seen the movies, but one day a friend insisted, loaned me her copy of Don't Look Now and just said: Trust me.

Three-Minute Fiction: 'Ten Ring Fingers' And 'Ghost Words'

editor — Sun, 19 May 2013 10:54:00 +0000
NPR's Bob Mondello and Susan Stamberg read excerpts of two of the best submissions for Round 11 of our short story contest. They read Ten Ring Fingers by Tamara Breuer of Washington, D.C., and Ghost Words by Matheus Macedo of Winthrop, Mass. You can read their full stories below and find other stories on our Three-Minute Fiction page or on Facebook.

Ten Ring Fingers

Tamara Breuer — Sun, 19 May 2013 10:42:00 +0000
She found the first ring on a night that smelled of body odor and beer. The bar's last customers had finally given up hope of taking her to bed and staggered away, leaving her to clean the stains of their desperation. She mopped the floor as quickly as possible to escape the place that made her feel uncomfortable in her own skin.
A glimmer of gold caught her eye. She bent down and pulled the thin metal band from a pile of grime.

Ghost Words

Matheus Macedo — Sun, 19 May 2013 10:41:00 +0000
The letter smelled of lavender and vanilla, like she couldn't decide which perfume to use so she used both. Her hand-writing had been drawn with the careful precision only seventh-grade girls in love have patience for. Hidden behind the words were indents and scratches, ghosts of words that weren't quite right, rewrites on top of rewrites.

One Couple, Nearly 20 Years, All 'Before Midnight'

editor — Sun, 19 May 2013 09:41:00 +0000
In 1995, an unintended cult-classic trilogy was born with a film that centered on a simple, romantic premise. Two strangers in their early 20s spend a spontaneous night together in Vienna. The characters, Jesse and Celine, split ways in Before Sunrise, but they reunited nine years later for a sequel, Before Sunset.
In that sequel, Jesse and Celine, played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, find each other in Paris for another brief rendezvous.

Siblings' Separation Haunts In 'Kite Runner' Author's Latest

editor — Sun, 19 May 2013 09:41:00 +0000
There was a time around 2003, before e-books and e-readers, when it seemed that everywhere you turned — in an airport, on a bus or anywhere people read — people were lost in The Kite Runner. An epic tale set in Afghanistan, the book sold more than 7 million copies in the U.S.