The Writer’s Wives, that very typified concept, embodied by women like Vera Nabokov or Patricia Llosa or Eileen Blair, George Orwell’s wife, who served as managers, administrators, typographers, editors and maids of their author husbands, is so prevalent in the history of literature that even clever homosexual writers knew how to find one, without interposed sex. The graphic novel Céleste and Proust (why not Céleste and Marcel), by Chloé Cruchaudet, published by Lumen, is dedicated to one of these figures, Céleste Albaret, who was secretary, messenger and source of inspiration for Marcel Proust, and who He cared for him until his death. A dedication that the Frenchman wrote for Albaret is preserved in a copy of La parte de Guermantes II, in 1921, in which he calls her “my always friend, the cross of war, because it endured gothas and berthas, the one that endured the cross of my humor.”
KNIFE COVER
Except in specific cases, book covers usually vary in the different countries and markets in which they are published. In the case of Salman Rushdie’s Knife, one of the most anticipated books of the year, however, the cover design is so striking and premeditated that it has been maintained with some variations throughout. In the original English, a vertical cut trompe-l’oeil replaces the “i” in Knife. In the Spanish edition of Random House Literature, however, the title goes below, and stands out less than the author’s name. The reason is obvious – the essay begins with the attack that Rushdie suffered at a public event in August 2022 and recounts the months after that assassination attempt – and the inspiration does not have to be looked far away either. Drink from Lucio Fontana’s torn canvas paintings, the series of Cuts that the Italian-Argentine artist made between 1958 and his death in 1968. Apparently the original title of Rushdie’s book was going to be Knife in the Eye. but famous super agent Andrew Wylie suggested leaving it in Cuchillo.
THE COFFEE THAT VAN GOGH DIDN’T PAINT
For decades, tourists who went to Arles took photos in front of Café La Nuit, a restaurant with a yellow-ocher façade whose owners had gone to great lengths to make everyone believe that this place was the same one that Van Gogh painted in one of his most famous paintings, Café Terrace at Night Nuit. Now the establishment has closed due to tax issues – the owner was accused of fraud – and thus ends a classic of the artistic-tourist picaresque. In another painting, the painter reproduced the cafe’s billiard room, and that had also been recreated indoors for tourists’ photos. The real Café La Nuit that Van Gogh went to was probably in the city’s Forum Square and does not exist, because it was demolished by Allied bombing in 1944. Until it is demolished, turned into a Starbucks or someone paints it In a different color, the fake Café La Nuit can continue to be part of the atlas of fake historical monuments that has illustrious examples around the world, such as the Ford Theater in Washington, where Lincoln was not assassinated. It is actually a reconstruction from 1968.
(STILL) SUBSTITUTE SEEK FOR ‘SUCCESSION’
Millionaires about to lose their power? Resentful ex-wives? Tense scenes filmed in a boardroom with a huge expensive wooden table in the center? Without a doubt, the orphans of Succession, which ended a year ago, will sniff the trailer for A Man in Full, which premieres on Netflix on May 2, in the hope of finding some of that substance they loved so much. From the outset, they will have to adapt to the fact that this is a six-episode miniseries, and not a saga with several seasons. The series by David E. Kelley (veteran producer of Ally McBeal, Early Doctor and Big Little Lies among many others) adapts Tom Wolfe’s 1998 novel A Whole Man, with Jeff Daniels as the protagonist and roles for Diane Lane and Regina King. Wolfe’s adaptations worked perfectly in the eighties and nineties (Chosen for Glory, The Bonfire of the Vanities) but have found it more difficult lately to connect with the public. Disney launched a series that also adapted Chosen for Glory, the novel about the Mercury Seven, the seven men selected to make the first space flight with humans.
LET’S TALK ABOUT MONEY
When they get together, writers are big fans of talking about money. From those who do not have and from those who, in their inflamed minds, believe that other writers who are not them are winning. A recent and highly recommended series of articles published by the digital Lit Hub and the Dirt newsletter addresses the topic of money and writing from various points of view, from the end of the notion that devoting yourself to literature automatically puts you in the middle class, to the reluctance of many contemporary novels to clarify how their characters pay their rent and what they do with their lives. They also published a piece in which several authors anonymously explained how much money they spend in a week and on what (to no one’s surprise, many depend on the financial support of their partners). All this was also discussed at the second edition of the Working Class Literature Festival, which took place at the beginning of April in Florence and which deals with the literary voices of the new proletariat.
