Jonathan Raban, a British novelist and travel writer surveying the political landscape of the United States from his adopted home of Seattle, wrote some of the sharpest commentary on the presidential election. He continues his run of excellent essays with a canny reading of President Obama’s Inaugural Address in the Jan. 24 Guardian. He argues, convincingly, that “Obama was ...

New York The founder of the Dorothy Parker society, Kevin Fitzpatrick, recently wrote to the F. Scott Fitzgerald society inviting its members to an Algonquin hotel cocktail party, a gracious gesture worthy of old Scott himself. The Fitzgerald types did not even bother to answer. Back in his day, that would have constituted a casus belli, but things ain't ...

The Hollywood Reporter reports that The Notebook director Nick Cassavetes has signed on to direct The Beautiful and The Damned, which would tackle the shiny, bright, and often thorny relationship between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre. Though the glamorous duo were considered the jazzy embodiment of the Roaring Twenties, things did not end well (you know a relationship has ...