Francis Wheen: Show Me the Kapital to make "Karl Marx the Movie"
Oliver Duff

Francis Wheen's 1999 biography of Karl Marx portrayed an endearing, cigar-chomping Victorian hellraiser prone to intellectual bullying, drunken pub crawls and organising his daughter's suitors; penniless and largely ignored in his lifetime. Fans of the book included the militia leaders of Afghanistan's anti-Taliban Northern Alliance.

Now Wheen, columnist, historian and deputy editor of Private Eye, is in talks to turn his opus into a film. On Friday, he met in Paris with the Haitian director Raoul Peck, a former cab driver who became the Haitian Culture minister during a brief democratic hiatus, soon to work with Martin Scorsese.

"It's early days, but quite exciting," Wheen tells Pandora. "Raoul Peck seems very nice. We're putting together a treatment and finding funds from somewhere."

Wheen has been here before - in 1999, with movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, then boss of Miramax. Weinstein sent his emissary Tina Brown to London to tell Wheen that he loved the book, wanted Tom Stoppard to write a screenplay and planned to cast Ralph Fiennes as Marx and Gwyneth Paltrow as the aristocratic wife, Jenny von Westphalen.

Weinstein and Brown's interest evaporated. A subsequent BBC dramatisation was pulled when Greg Dyke "suddenly said he was fed up with 19th-century dramas with bonnets". Says Wheen: "I explained, unsuccessfully, that there aren't many bonnets in the Marx story."

Wheen's ideal casting? "Johnny Depp and [his wife] Vanessa Paradis."

Tillie Olsen, Feminist Writer, Dies at 94

Kuie Bosman, NY Times

Tillie Olsen, whose short stories, books and essays lent a heartfelt voice to the struggles of women and working-class people, died on Monday in Oakland, Calif. She was 94.

Ms. Olsen died after being in declining health for years, her daughter Laurie Olsen said.

A daughter of immigrants and a working mother starved for time to write, Ms. Olsen drew from her personal experiences to create a small but influential body of work. Her first published book, "Tell Me a Riddle" (1961), contained a short story, "I Stand Here Ironing," in which the narrator painfully recounts her difficult relationship with her daughter and the frustrations of motherhood and poverty.

At the time of the book's publication Ms. Olsen was heralded by critics as a short story writer of immense talent. The title story was made into a film in 1980 starring Melvyn Douglas and Lila Kedrova.

Ms. Olsen returned to issues of feminism and social struggle throughout her work, publishing a nonfiction book, "Silences," in 1978, an examination of the impediments that writers face because of sex, race or social class. Reviewing the book in The New York Times Book Review, Margaret Atwood attributed Ms. Olsen's relatively small output to her full life as a wife and mother, a "grueling obstacle course" experienced by many writers.

"These Sinister Christmas Holidays"

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Granma

Nobody remembers God at Christmas. There is such a roar of horns and
fireworks, so many garlands of colorful lights; so many innocent,
slaughtered turkeys; and so much stress from spending beyond our
means in order to look good that one wonders if anyone has any time
to ponder that such madness is to celebrate the birthday of a boy
born 2,000 years ago in a destitute horse stable, a short distance
from where a few thousand years before King David was born.

Nine hundred and fifty-four million Christians believe that this boy
was God reincarnated, but many celebrate his birth as if they don't
really believe it. In addition, there are several millions who have
never believed it but like to party and many others who would be
willing to turn the world upside down so that nobody would believe
it. It would be interesting to find out how many of them also
wholeheartedly believe that the Christmas of today is a revolting
holiday but don't dare say it for a prejudice that is no longer
religious, but social.