Diane Kurys has directed a film biography of rebellious French writer Francoise Sagan, titled simply Sagan. Perhaps inspired by the success of La Vie En Rose, a recent biopic of Edith Piaf, the new film stars Sylvie Testud (who played Piaf’s friend in La Vie en Rose), and follows the story of Francoise Sagan from the publication of her first book to her final days in Normandy.

Every once in a while East Village poet Richard Hell gets invited to write for the New York Times Book Review, and when he does he usually shows the other critics how it's done. His unenthusiastic review of Edmund White's biography Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel is witty, lush and elegant, especially when he ignores White's book and spins his own appreciations:

I've just read a wild tour de force of a comic book, set in 1907 Paris in the homes of Gertrude and Leo Stein, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Appollinaire and Paul Gauguin. The Salon is a slim paperback by Nick Bertozzi, who tells an absolutely loopy but smart story drawn in a fast-moving straight action-comix style.

1. To be a good litblogger, you can't just sit back and think up good jokes about whatever is happening around you. You have to get out and make stuff happen, and that's one reason why Ed Champion is probably the best litblogger on the planet right now. I'm inspired to declare this after reading his two (yes, two) recent mash-ups with the esteemed and intellectually intimidating William T. Vollman, who many avid readers wouldn't even approach once.

If more writers could write like Richard Hell, I'd be a happier man.

Hell doesn't write very much, or very often. He'll give us one new book of poetry or a slim paperback novel every few years. Godlike, his first novel since 1997's superb Go Now, is an absolute pleasure and a perfect distillation of this unique author's talents.

You know those internet quizzes where you find out what kind of Disney character you are, what root vegetable you are, which flag of the world you are? Well, I don't know if there's a quiz for which classic existentialist text you are, but if there were, I'm pretty sure I would be No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre.

I read the entire 120 Days Of Sodom by de Sade in two days. I came across it in my cousin's attic, wiped off the dust and engrossed myself in the most despicable, most disgusting piece of literature I have ever seen, never for a moment tearing my eyes off the page, pausing only for cups of tea and cigarettes. I did not sleep all that weekend, surrounded by the dusky grime and darkness of the upstairs loft -- a fitting scene in which to read such a work.

All prophecies are fragile. They are subject to contradiction, to falsity. The false prophet, then, one might consider insane. But how does one interpret the language of prophecy? Is it a language of madness, of hidden truth, of images? Such questions are pertinent when discussing the works of visionary poet William Blake. His prophecies or visions informed his poetic style and language and invested them with a vigor, energy, and substance that reach far beyond the mere meaning or signification of language.