Salon.com > Suzanne Collins

“Hunger Games” author to release new book in 2013

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 22:43:00 +0000

NEW YORK (AP) -- "The Hunger Games" novelist Suzanne Collins has a new book coming out next year.

The multimillion-selling children's author has completed an autobiographical picture story scheduled for Sept. 10, 2013, Scholastic Inc. announced Thursday. The 40-page book will be called "Year of the Jungle," based on the time in Vietnam served by Collins' father, a career Air Force officer.

"Year of the Jungle" is her first book since 2010's "Mockingjay," the last of "The Hunger Games" trilogy that made Collins an international sensation. More than 50 million copies of the "Hunger Games" books are in print and the first of four planned movies has grossed more than $600 million worldwide since being released out in March.

Collins' next project will be intended for ages 4 and up, a younger audience than those who have read, and re-read, her dystopian stories about young people forced to hunt and kill each other. But "Year of the Jungle" will continue, in a gentler way, the author's exploration of war. James Proimos, an old friend from her days as a television writer who helped persuade Collins to become a children's author, illustrated the book.

Did “Louie” kill the sitcom?

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 18:49:00 +0000

Louis C.K. emerges from the subway station: sullen, sweating. His balding crown of carrot colored hair is slightly brighter than his ruddy, freckled skin. The man is overweight but solid, like a fullback long past glory, in love with French fries, who still hits the gym. He’s got broad shoulders, thick arms, A-cup man breasts, and a sizable gut that hangs over his beltline. His black t-shirt is half a size too small, constricting his movements, and adding to the general impression of physical discomfort.

C.K. makes it up the subway steps and arrives at street level, exhaling as if he’s crested some unprecedented summit. He marches into a pizza joint, scarfs most of a giant slice in three bites, then disgusted, throws what remains in the garbage. To watch him eat is akin to watching a junkie shoot heroin; one can trace the convergence of shame and sublimity. All the while there’s music playing, the syncopated up beat of seventies funk. The singer repeats: “Louie, Louie, you’re gonna die.” The camera cuts to another set of stairs, this time a declension, C.K. hustling down to a door marked “Comedy Cellar.” The juxtaposition is stark: here lies humor, at the intersection of pathos and indigestion. We must armor ourselves with laughter.

Better than “Hunger Games”?

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Ever since the release of the 1932 pre-Code classic “The Most Dangerous Game," hunting humans for sport has been one of the world’s oldest movie pastimes. It allows the audiences to have it both ways: to feel superior to the craven fictional thrill-seekers who implement these hunts, and viscerally partake in the same process.

The genesis of the dangerous game that drives “The Hunger Games” is somewhat more complicated. It is the end product of a true cultural Cuisinart. Some point to the Japanese novel and film “Battle Royale”; others to the over-the-top Italian movie “The Tenth Victim,” based on Robert Sheckley’s 1953 short story. Then, there is Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and Richard Dawson’s greatest hit “The Running Man,” or Stephen King’s other futuristic nightmare, “The Long Walk.”

Real-life hunger games

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 20:03:00 +0000

The Great Drought of 2012 has yet to come to an end, but we already know that its consequences will be severe. With more than one-half of America’s counties designated as drought disaster areas, the 2012 harvest of corn, soybeans, and other food staples is guaranteed to fall far short of predictions. This, in turn, will boost food prices domestically and abroad, causing increased misery for farmers and low-income Americans and far greater hardship for poor people in countries that rely on imported U.S. grains.

This, however, is just the beginning of the likely consequences: if history is any guide, rising food prices of this sort will also lead to widespread social unrest and violent conflict.