大象传媒

Tim Burton has carved a niche as American cinema's foremost purveyor of the gothic through films such as Edward Sissorhands and Sweeny Todd. Now he has turned his lens on Lewis Carol's classic fantasy, Alice in Wonderland. Philip Dodd finds out how Caroll's classic has fared under it's Burton makeover.

Don Delillo has long been a fixed point in American literature. His new novel is about a meeting of two men and one woman. One is Richad Elster, a scholar US govt. war advisor. For two years he has tried to make intellectual sense of the troop deployments, counterinsurgency orders and secret renditions of US foreign policy, but has now retreated to the desert to an isolated house. There he is joined by Jim Finley, a young filmmaker intent on documenting his experience. The two men talk and drink. Then they are joined by Elster's daughter Jessie, who dramatically alters the dynamic. When a devastating event follows, all the men's talk and accumulated meaning of conversation and isolation are thrown into question.

And Philip hears from another American novelist, Jonathan Safran Foer, on why we should all become vegetarians.