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Literature
Argentinean poet and political critic Juan Gelman has died aged 83 in Mexico City.
Juan Gelman, the son of Jewish immigrants to Argentina from Ukraine, is considered to be one of the greatest authors in Spanish and was awarded the prestigious Cervantes Prize in 2007.
The poet, a left-wing activist and a guerrilla in Argentina in the 1960s and 1970s, lived in Mexico for 20 years.
He wrote more than 20 books of poetry since 1956 – translated into 14 languages – and regular columns for newspapers.
Juan Gelman is considered to be one of the greatest authors in Spanish and was awarded the prestigious Cervantes Prize in 2007
Juan Gelman’s son and his pregnant daughter-in-law died after being abducted by the military government in the 1970s.
Official accounts say almost 20,000 people disappeared at the hands of the regime in between 1976 to 1983, but human rights groups say the figure is at least 30,000.
In 1990 Juan Gelman was able to identify his son’s remains, discovering that he had been executed and buried in a barrel filled with sand and cement.
The poet was never able to find the remains of his daughter-in-law Maria Claudia.
But in 2000, Juan Gelman was also able to trace his granddaughter, born before Maria Claudia’s presumed murder. The child had been handed over to a pro-government family in Uruguay.
The reunion was one of the most high profile involving disappeared people in Argentina’s history – fewer than 600 victims of the 1976-83 “dirty war” have been found.
Juan Gelman’s work celebrates life but is also tempered with social and political commentary, reflecting his own painful experiences with the politics of his country.
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Scanned copies of three short stories by JD Salinger, which the reclusive author did not want published, have been leaked online.
The Ocean Full Of Bowling Balls, Paula and Birthday had previously only been available to read at two American university libraries.
The Ocean Full Of Bowling Balls is of particular importance, as it inspired elements of The Catcher In The Rye.
The stories were uploaded to a file-sharing website this week, and rapidly spread online.
The collection, titled Three Stories, features a plain black cover, and also contains a letter from JD Salinger to his publisher Little, Brown and Company, discussing proof copies of his works.
David Ulin, a book critic with the Los Angeles Times, said that at least two of the stories in the collection were “the real deal”.
“I’ve never read The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls,” he wrote.
“It’s part of a collection of Salinger material at the Princeton University Library and available only to scholars who are supervised as they read.
“I have read the other two stories, however, at the University of Texas’ Ransom Center, and the versions of them in Three Stories are the real deal.”
“The Ransom Center is relatively free with its manuscripts; visitors can even have photocopies made, although they are prohibited from circulating the work.
Scanned copies of three short stories by JD Salinger, which the reclusive author did not want published, have been leaked online
“It’s more difficult to imagine how a manuscript was copied from the Princeton Library, but in this digital age, I have little doubt that it could be done.”
JD Salinger’s only published novel, The Catcher In The Rye is a tale of teenage angst which has gone on to become one of the most influential American novels of the modern era, selling more than 65 million copies.
The Ocean Full Of Bowling Balls is a prequel to the story of its idealistic outcast, Holden Caulfield, and recounts the death of his younger brother Kenneth – renamed Allie in the subsequent novel.
It was originally scheduled to appear in Harper’s Bazaar, but JD Salinger withdrew it before publication.
Following the success of Catcher In The Rye, JD Salinger released a collection of short stories and several novellas but stopped publishing in 1965 and withdrew from public view – although it is believed he continued to work.
Living in New Hampshire, JD Salinger protected his privacy fiercely until his death in 2010, aged 91.
In 1982, he sued to halt the publication of a fictitious interview with a major magazine.
In 2009, JD Salinger took court action to stop the US publication of a novel by Swedish writer Fredrik Colting that presented Holden Caulfield as an old man.
In his final interview, given in 1980, JD Salinger said: “There’s a marvelous peace in not publishing.
“When you publish, the world thinks you owe something. If you don’t publish, they don’t know what you’re doing. You can keep it for yourself.”
JD Salinger had given instructions that his unpublished stories should not be seen for 50 years after he died.
However, a documentary released earlier this year claimed five works would be made available between 2015 and 2020 – among them The Last And The Best Of The Peter Pans, a sequel to Catcher In The Rye.
The appearance of Three Stories was first mentioned on discussion site Reddit, and later reported by Buzzfeed – but the provenance of the collection is unclear.
A paperback version was recently sold on eBay, and is thought to be one of 25 copies printed privately in Britain in 1999.
However, the version that was shared online has a different cover to the one listed on eBay.
The user who distributed the scan, on invitation only file-sharing site what.cd, wrote an anonymous message saying they would “confirm and, with that, take responsibility to the claim that these are accurate to the originals”.
“It took me many weeks of research to find that this book existed, and many more weeks to acquire it,” the anonymous user added.
A JRR Tolkien biopic is being developed by Fox Searchlight.
Fox Searchlight was behind last year’s Hitchcock film.
The Lord of the Rings author’s biopic will chronicle how the key moments in the novelist’s life led him to write The Hobbit, and his acclaimed Rings trilogy.
Written by David Gleeson, the biopic film will focus on JRR Tolkien’s time at Oxford University and as a soldier during WW1.
Films based on JRR Tolkien’s books have grossed nearly $4 billion worldwide.
JRR Tolkien biopic will chronicle how the key moments in the novelist’s life led him to write The Hobbit
Peter Jackson, who directed the Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings trilogy, will release the second chapter in the Hobbit trilogy, The Desolation of Smaug, next month.
Aside from his active role in WW1, JRR Tolkien also acted as a code breaker during WW2.
The film will also cover his friendship with fellow author CS Lewis, with whom he studied at university and formed the writing group known as The Inklings.
It will be produced by Chernin Entertainment, behind films such as cop-comedy The Heat and Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
However, previous projects have been scuppered by the Tolkien estate, which is known to be protective of the author’s output.
Last year, the estate sued Warner Bros for at least $80 million in damages from unauthorized merchandising of the Tolkien books. Fox Searchlight, which was behind last year’s Hitchcock film
In July this year, Warner Bros launched its own counterclaim, alleging the Tolkien suit has caused the studio to miss out on millions of dollars in licensing opportunities.
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2013 was awarded to Canadian author Alice Munro “master of the contemporary short story”.
Alice Munro, 82, whose books include Dear Life and Dance of the Happy Shades, is only the 13th woman to win the prize since its inception in 1901.
Previous winners include literary giants such as Rudyard Kipling, Toni Morrison and Ernest Hemingway.
Presented by the Nobel Foundation, the award – which is presented to a living writer – is worth 8 million kronor.
Last year’s recipient was Chinese novelist Mo Yan.
Alice Munro, who began writing in her teenage years, published her first story, The Dimensions of a Shadow, in 1950.
She had been studying English at the University of Western Ontario at the time.
Dance of the Happy Shades, published in 1968, was Alice Munro’s first collection, and it went on to win Canada’s highest literary prize, the Governor General’s Award.
In 2009, Alice Munro won the Man Booker International Prize for her entire body of work.
Alice Munro is the first Canadian writer to receive the prestigious award since Saul Bellow, who won in 1976.
Alice Munro is only the 13th woman to win the prize since its inception in 1901
Often compared to Anton Chekhov, Alice Munro is known for writing about the human spirit and a regular theme of her work is the dilemma faced by young girls growing up and coming to terms with living in a small town.
The Nobel academy praised her “finely tuned storytelling, which is characterized by clarity and psychological realism”.
Since the 1960s, Alice Munro has published more than a dozen collections of short stories.
Her early stories capture the difference between her own experiences growing up in Wingham, a conservative Canadian town west of Toronto, and her life after the social revolution of the 1960s.
In an interview in 2003, Alice Munro described the 1960s as “wonderful”.
It was “because, having been born in 1931, I was a little old, but not too old, and women like me after a couple of years were wearing miniskirts and prancing around,” she said.
Alice Munro’s writing has brought her several awards. She won a National Book Critics Circle prize for Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, and is a three-time winner of the Governor General’s prize and The Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.
Other notable books include Lives of Girls and Women, Who Do You Think You Are, The Progress of Love and Runaway.
In 1980, The Beggar Maid was shortlisted for the annual Booker Prize for Fiction and her stories frequently appear in publications such as the New Yorker and the Paris Review.
Several of her stories have also been adapted for the screen, including The Bear Came Over the Mountain, which became Away from Her, starring Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent.
Alice Munro revealed earlier this year that her latest book, Dear Life, published in 2012, would be her last.
In 2009, Alice Munro revealed she had been receiving treatment for cancer. She also had bypass surgery for a heart condition.
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