This morning's Lull Report … - NYTimes.com

… courtesy of Dave Lull:



… Restoration: Volume of Robert Frost’s Letters Renews Debate About His Character - NYTimes.com.

“You see there are so many Frosts,” said Jay Parini, a Frost biographer who was not involved with the project. “He moves among them, like everyone else, a wounded individual trying to make his way in the world.”

… Because he is too certain (like many of the commenters): Why Sam Harris is Unlikely to Change his Mind.

I am not anti-reason. I am also not anti-religion. I am opposed to dogmatism. I am skeptical of each person’s individual powers of reasoning, and I’m even more skeptical of the reasoning of groups of activists, hyper-partisans, and other righteous reformers who would remake society according to their own reasoned (or revealed) vision.

Me, too. Or, as Francis Spufford puts it in Unapologetic:

"I don't know if there is a God. And neither do you, and neither does Richard bloody Dawkins, and neither does anyone. It not being a knowable item. What I do know is that, when I am lucky, when I have managed to pay attention, when for once I have hushed my noise for a little while, it can feel as if there is one. And so it makes emotional sense to proceed as if he's there, to dare the conditionality."

…  Get to work: How to Write a Bestselling Book This Year — The Definitive Resource List and How-To Guide.

… The script recaptured: IN SEARCH OF A LOST SCREENPLAY: WHEN PINTER ADAPTED PROUST.

I'm not a huge Pinter fan — there's only so far you can go with silences — but his adaptation of John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman was simply brilliant.

…A whistleblower's tale: An Officer and a Spy.

… Belief and history: The disciple’s dilemma.

Horror and incredulity about the apparent worldwide resurgence of Roman Catholicism, Brady shows, was the thread that ran through much, if not most, of Froude’s most ardent writing and campaigning.

… Good luck: Liam Neeson reportedly joins film adaptation of Shusaku Endo novel 'Silence'.



Let's hope Scorsese does a better job with Endo than he did with Kazantzakis.