This fascinating article about how Pixar's creative process differs from the rest of Hollywood emphasizes how they create the best movies being shown today. Essentially, what they're saying is that Pixar has "...the flexibility to go through multiple iterations of writing and performance" which enables them to get the most out of their material, rather then being stuck with just what can be produced during the regular movie shoot.
David Mitchell has a novel out that I can't wait to read - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet. Here's a short bio of his life, and gives a good, if brief, history of his excellent books.
This blog entry about Against the Day makes a good point about the people that complain about the size of Pynchon's books:
I recall that my daughters were not dismayed as the later volumes in the Harry Potter series grew longer and longer -- if you're reading the book just for the sheer pleasure of reading it, more is better, perhaps, as three scoops of ice cream are better than two. Likewise, Stephen King's readers seem not at all put off by the length of The Stand, say.
But -- when a book is reputed to be complex, ambitious, intellectual, important, and so on, and it clocks in at, say, 1,087 pages, even serious lit folks (e.g., my faculty colleagues) will probably give it a pass.
Andrew points us to a great Mary Oliver poem called Mockingbirds.
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