Writer David Foster Wallace Found Dead

(NEWSER) - British author JG Ballard died this morning "with great sadness" after many years of poor health, his agent said today. The 78-year-old novelist and short story writer was most famous for his semi-autobiographical book Empire of the Sun, later made into a film by Steven Spielberg, and his controversial novel Crash, adapted for the screen by David Cronenberg. More»

In Pale King , deceased writer 'didn't want to do the old tricks'

(NEWSER) - David Foster Wallace fans can get a glimpse of the deceased writer’s unfinished novel tomorrow, when the New Yorker publishes an excerpt from The Pale King, the Washington Post reports. Wallace, who killed himself last fall, had been working on the book for years. The magazine will also run an article tracing The Pale King’s saga. More»

Infinite Jest author was an 'astute observer' and 'prose magician'

(NEWSER) - David Foster Wallace was remembered today as a complex novelist who engaged in layer upon layer of self-examination. The author of Infinite Jest "wrote about the maddening impossibility of scrutinizing yourself without also scrutinizing yourself scrutinizing yourself and so on," Laura Miller writes in Salon. Wallace's suicide remains a mystery, "but any reader can see how his fiction had, in recent years, moved into greater darkness." More»

Michael Scott Moore was considering writing a book about Somali pirates

(NEWSER) - Somali gunmen have kidnapped noted travel and surfing writer Michael Scott Moore, and are demanding an unknown ransom for his release. Moore, a Manhattan Beach native currently living in Berlin, holds both US and German citizenship. He was in Somalia because he was considering writing a book about Somali pirates, according to KTLA . He was taken Saturday, just days before a US raid freed two other Somali captives . More»

Yet another occupation for busy actor

(NEWSER) - Jack-of-multiple-trades James Franco is about to peddle his latest endeavor on Amazon. The actor's first novel, Actors Anonymous, has been acquired by Amazon's new fiction editor and the tome will head directly to the company's online store. The work is supposed to be a barely-fictionalized version of Franco's own experiences, reports the New York Observer . Franco's first book of short stories, Palo Alto, won less-than-stellar reviews from Gawker , which is also less than thrilled about the upcoming book. More»