Don’t miss Polanski, Kureshi, Theroux and Le Carre
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In the Los Angeles Times this week, Richard Schickel looked at the ‘well-researched, decently written’ biography ‘Polanski’ by Christopher Sandford. After the jump, a video interview with Polanski, in which he talks about his initial reluctance to return to Los Angeles to make ‘Chinatown,’ and the inspiration for its ending (the film version of ‘Of Mice and Men’).
Hanif Kureshi, whose new novel is ‘Something to Tell You,’ talked to Charles Taylor, saying: ‘I could remember the ‘60s, and indeed the ‘50s, as well as the ‘70s and ‘80s. . . . So I wanted to do something a bit bigger. You meet these people when you’re 20 and somehow, when you’re 53, you still know them. You can see their lives.’
Paul Theroux (‘Ghost Train to the Eastern Star’) spoke at the L.A. Public Library’s Aloud reading series, confessing, ‘I have been a lucky traveler.’
And Tim Rutten reviews ‘A Most Wanted Man,’ the 21st novel by spymaster John le Carré, dubbing it ‘surely one of his best.’ Rutten writes that the book is:
. . .intricately plotted, beautifully written, propulsive, morally engaged, but timely as today’s headlines. It’s also a very angry book in ways that may discomfort some American readers. In a recent memoir of incidents from his own six-year service in British intelligence, Le Carré, now 76, writes of ‘the madness of spies’ and the way in which their occupational delusions infect the body politic. ‘A Most Wanted Man’ is an exploration of the murkily ambiguous and morally turbulent waters in which America’s spies -- with their extraordinary renditions, torture and clandestine unilateralism -- now fish.
Catch the book trailer for ‘A Most Wanted Man,’ featuring author John le Carré and Polanski’s 2006 interview after the jump.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Above: the book trailer for John le Carré’s ‘A Most Wanted Man,’ featuring Le Carré; below, an interview with Roman Polanski, during which he provides commentary on ‘Chinatown.’
