Indeed, as Pulp Fiction took over Hollywood’s imagination, its poster took over college dorm rooms across the country. The brainchild of Miramax’s creative director, James Verdesoto, it resembles a vintage, weathered paperback cover, foregrounding Uma Thurman in character as Mia Wallace lounging on a bed with her legs crossed in the air, holding a lit cigarette and staring seductively beside a pistol and pulp novel. It’s sexy, mysterious, and dangerous—a modern take on the mid-century femme fatale that could appeal to film bros and third-wave feminists alike. And perhaps most importantly, it’s a scene that never takes place in the movie itself. “It’s not like we pulled a still from the set,” says David Dinerstein, Miramax’s former head of marketing. “This was a photo shoot designed specifically to provide a feeling similar to the one you would experience after seeing the film.”
Three decades later, the Pulp Fiction poster remains inseparably linked to the movie’s groundbreaking success and evolving place in American culture. It’s iconic and cliché, empowering and provocative, an annual top-seller among online poster distributors and frequently purchased at college campus flea markets, where it’s still reaching new generations. To have it on your wall, whether or not you’d seen the movie, signified fandom, aspiration, and something else entirely. “Through association,” Verdesoto says, “you became as cool as the movie.”
I spent the evening texting with other parents to figure out how we would get through the following days. “If it’s a longer-term thing, we can accommodate a few kids if they send a teacher,” I wrote to the WhatsApp group. I’d just turned in the last draft of a book and had some time to help, and the caregivers were onboard. Other parents chimed in offering their apartments, too. The day care had been operating successfully for years; in my mind, “longer term” meant a week or two at most. This closure couldn’t go on for more than that, could it?
Supposedly everyone is afraid of public speaking, but some of us have reasons to dread it more than others—in particular, a writer who is bad at talking. How can someone who traffics in words for a living be bad at speaking? Shouldn’t the two go together?
Kate Atkinson’s title for her sixth Jackson Brodie detective novel, Death at the Sign of the Rook, offers a broad hint that she is about to play games with the genre of the British country house mystery. She quickly enables all the tropes—the estate with a deer park, the multi-room manor house—Burton Makepeace , the haughty aristocratic owner, her unappealing children, servants, the addled vicar, his handful of congregants, a war-wounded major, an escaped dangerous murderer, and various locals. She even mocks the authors of the kind of novel she is in the midst of writing, attributing people and plot lines to a Nancy Styles, the late author of “cosy” mysteries. She does invent a few new types, especially the seeming con women, or is it just one woman, who steals what might be priceless art. It’s obvious that Atkinson is amusing herself and her reader. But she gets away with it by transcending the cliches with an inventiveness that makes the types fresh and with the clever intertwining of multiple plot threads.
Based on an infamous episode from Georgia history as experienced by two childhood friends, Ain’t No Grave paints a unique picture of early twentieth century history. Versions of the story have appeared ever since these shocking events of 1915, most notably the musical ‘Parade,’ but Mary Glickman’s novel gives an inside view.
The altruism of the project is clear, however. I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You isn’t just about Hart explaining her absence over the past decade. It is also an attempt to make the best of a terrible situation by coaching others who may be struggling with long-term health conditions, and the grief and loss of confidence that often accompanies them.
He is very sweet about his children and hates Halloween, all of which means that, even if this particular book is more of a snack than a three-course meal, Tucci remains a fabulous charmer.