To kick off 2010, we at The Millions are thrilled to announce that Emily St. John Mandel has joined us as a regular contributor. Emily lives in Brooklyn. Her first novel, Last Night In Montreal, was recently published by Unbridled Books; her second novel, The Singer’s Gun, will be published by the same press in May 2010. Her pieces for The Millions are collected here. Welcome Emily!
Welcome Emily St. John Mandel!
Self-Absorbed
Geoff Dyer is fond of taking potshots at literary academics. He devotes considerable time in one of his novels to a professor whose speech at a conference goes off the rails. Which is why it’s odd that, in mid-July, the author showed up at a conference devoted to -- what else? -- his own work. (It's apropos to point out here that our own Mark O'Connell wrote a great essay for Slate about Dyer.)
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The Restraints of Language
Recommended Reading: Elisa Gabbert at Guernica on the relationship between ideas and language. “How can the name come after the concept if you need the name to understand the concept? This problem of circularity always made me resistant to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in its strong version, which states that our thoughts are bound by the restraints of our language.”
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Edan Lepucki’s Other People Pod
Our own Edan Lepucki sits down with Brad Listi for an Other People Podcast. If for nothing else, listen to them discuss Facebook addiction. Their discussion starts around the eleven minute mark. (P.S. you should also check out both Edan and Brad's Year in Reading posts.)
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What Kind
At Boston Review, check out a new poem from Maggie Nelson. At The Millions, Leslie Jamison includes Nelson’s Bluets and The Art of Cruelty in A Year in Reading.
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“You are saying you do not exist in the American dream except as a nightmare.”
Make some time this weekend to read James Baldwin and Audre Lorde in conversation, which originally appeared in a 1984 issue of Essence, but has since been reposted by the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts.