Millions Millions

Ireland debuted a new stamp featuring a 224-word short story...

Sun, 19 May 2013 17:30:46 -0400

Ireland debuted a new stamp featuring a 224-word short story written by Dublin teenager Eoin Moore. That’s right. Ireland’s so bookish that even its postage is literary.

Publicity bigwig Paul Bogaards spilled the beans on Twitter...

Sun, 19 May 2013 14:30:47 -0400

Publicity bigwig Paul Bogaards spilled the beans on Twitter Thursday night: Lorrie Moore has a new short fiction collection in the pipeline. It’s slated for March 2014 release.

Selected Shorts: What Would You Do? (Feat. David Sedaris)

Sun, 19 May 2013 11:35:28 -0400

Selected Shorts: What Would You Do? (Feat. David Sedaris):

Recommended Listening: David Sedaris presented three short stories while guest hosting WNYC’s Selected Shorts. The three stories were written by Amy Hempel, Tobias Wolff, and Frank Gannon, and each one has to do with “hard choices,” says Sedaris.

Porn Studies is a new academic journal focused on “cultural...

Sat, 18 May 2013 21:45:40 -0400

Porn Studies is a new academic journal focused on “cultural products and services designated as pornographic.” Have fun asking your librarian for this one.

Families and their groceries from around the world.

Sat, 18 May 2013 19:20:31 -0400

Families and their groceries from around the world.

From White Russians to Old Fashioneds: cocktails in literature...

Sat, 18 May 2013 17:40:30 -0400

From White Russians to Old Fashioneds: cocktails in literature and film.

It’s all fun and games until you cast Vincent Kartheiser as Mr....

Sat, 18 May 2013 15:30:34 -0400

It’s all fun and games until you cast Vincent Kartheiser as Mr. Darcy.

"What [Vladimir] Nabokov is actually doing in Lolita is deliberately drawing on all manner of..."

Sat, 18 May 2013 13:30:40 -0400

“What [Vladimir] Nabokov is actually doing in Lolita is deliberately drawing on all manner of anti-Semitic propaganda, from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to Nazi caricatures of the Jewish ‘type,’ to create in Humbert Humbert the anti-Semitic cliché of legend, rather as, say, Chaucer draws on medieval misogynist writings to create in the figure of the Wife of Bath the archetypal shrew of his male audience’s nightmares.”

- Is Humbert Humbert Jewish? by Mark Ford

"I spoke to Poggioli about you, at Harvard. He would like to have you there for six months or a year,..."

Fri, 17 May 2013 20:31:34 -0400

“I spoke to Poggioli about you, at Harvard. He would like to have you there for six months or a year, and this is an opportunity you should not refuse. Even though Harvard is not America, but a kind of Olympus containing the intellectual cream from all over the world, you would have the chance to see a bit of America traveling around. And one should not let slip any chances of “talking” to the Americans, of doing something to bridge this abyss which divides us, and it really is an abyss: this is a different world, as far from Europe and our problems as the Moon.”

- To prepare us for the release of Italo Calvino’s letters, the editors at Page-Turner are running excerpts from the book. In their latest installment — following their first two — Calvino describes New York City, which “swallowed [him] up like a carnivorous plant.”

A theory of place in literature derived from Parks and...

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:41:52 -0400

A theory of place in literature derived from Parks and Recreation? Why, Ploughshares blog, you’re too kind.

Sorry, writers: turns out loneliness can kill you.

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:14:23 -0400

Sorry, writers: turns out loneliness can kill you.

“Novelist/journalist/activist Ru Freeman is a...

Fri, 17 May 2013 16:45:33 -0400

“Novelist/journalist/activist Ru Freeman is a tender-hearted fireball.”

"You might think, then, that the people who know Fitzgerald’s novel best would have the most..."

Fri, 17 May 2013 15:15:49 -0400

“You might think, then, that the people who know Fitzgerald’s novel best would have the most disapproving view of the movie. To test that hypothesis, we asked five English professors who specialize in American literature to take in an early showing and share their thoughts. And to our surprise, they liked it.”

- Kevin Hartnett, “Judging Luhrmann’s Gatsby: Five English Scholars Weigh In”

“The Origins of Feces is a genial book, and often a kick...

Thu, 16 May 2013 22:30:45 -0400

“The Origins of Feces is a genial book, and often a kick to read, but I put it down thinking two things: 1. I will never look at shit the same way again; and 2. We are in deep shit.”

The first official trailer has been released for James Franco’s...

Thu, 16 May 2013 21:01:24 -0400

The first official trailer has been released for James Franco’s As I Lay Dying adaptation. The film will premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

"I am consistently drawn in, and consistently disappointed, by bio-novels about women made unhappy by..."

Thu, 16 May 2013 20:01:30 -0400

“I am consistently drawn in, and consistently disappointed, by bio-novels about women made unhappy by famous men. I read The Paris Wife, about Hadley Hemingway. I read Loving Frank, about Frank Lloyd Wright’s mistress. I read the diaries of Sofya Tolstoy. And now I’ve read Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald. I put each of them aside a heavy sigh when I’ve finished. I’m not disappointed in the books, but in the lives of the women. The point of these books is to tell their side of the story, but in reality, and definitely in Zelda’s case, they didn’t get their own side of the story.”

- The Museum of Unhappy Women by Janet Potter

“Paradoxically, this is the reason to write and read about...

Thu, 16 May 2013 15:30:47 -0400

“Paradoxically, this is the reason to write and read about Zelda [Fitzgerald], because she deserved a life much more interesting than the one that she got. Interesting to her, that is, a life she could have given her energy and talents to, not just a life made interesting by famous friends and European capitals.” - Janet Potter

“When you flush the toilet, do you know where your shit...

Thu, 16 May 2013 11:40:32 -0400

“When you flush the toilet, do you know where your shit goes? Sure, in most cities, it flows into the main sewer system until it reaches a waste-water treatment plant somewhere on the outskirts of town. But then what happens to it? Do you have any idea?”

Cormac McCarthy Flaunts Sexy New Beach Body

Thu, 16 May 2013 11:20:20 -0400

Cormac McCarthy Flaunts Sexy New Beach Body

"To me a book is not just a particular file. It’s connected with personhood. Books are really, really..."

Wed, 15 May 2013 19:30:54 -0400

“To me a book is not just a particular file. It’s connected with personhood. Books are really, really hard to write. They represent a kind of a summit of grappling with what one really has to say. And what I’m concerned with is when Silicon Valley looks at books, they often think of them as really differently as just data points that you can mush together. They’re divorcing books from their role in personhood.”

- Digital pioneer and theorist Jaron Lanier fears that the Internet might be destroying not just literature, but also the middle class.