paper trail

Dec 27, 2010 @ 9:00:00 am

Julian Assange

New details of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s book deal have surfaced: The pact is reportedly worth 1.5 million dollars (with the majority of the fee being paid by his American publisher, Knopf, which is allegedly kicking in $800,000). However, it isn’t a tome that Assange relishes writing. As he insists: “I don't want to write this book, but I have to.”

Charles Baxter says the “most common mistake new writers make” is “vanity:" "They don’t realize that what has been blazing in their minds does not necessarily make it to the page.”

Did you think the holidays were (finally) over? You haven’t experienced the true spirit of the season until you listen to filmmaker Werner Herzog read this perennial Christmas classic: “‘Twas the night before Christmas, a season ruled by all-consuming desire or for the ‘perfect family experience,’ whatever the specifics, existential thirst is the engine that drives the holiday machine . . . ” (Via Harriet)

American Psycho, the musical?(!) According to the New York Post, Bret Easton Ellis’s once-controversial satire—about an impeccably groomed Wall Street serial killer with hilariously bad taste in music (unless, you like Huey Lewis and the News)—is heading for Broadway. We have just one modest request: Please dramatize the scene in which Patrick Bateman attends a U2 concert and hallucinates that Bono is Satan.