Millions Contributor Sonya Chung will read from her just-released novel Long for This World at McNally Jackson Books, 52 Prince Street, NYC, on March 10 at 7pm.
Sonya Chung at McNally Jackson 3/10
People who should feel rooted, but rarely do.
In an interview with the Guardian about Canada, Richard Ford talks about America: “I never had much conceptual idea of Canada being better. But whenever I go there, I feel this fierce sense of American exigence just relent. America beats on you so hard the whole time.” Also see: Michael Bourne’s review of the novel.
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The James Salter Diet
James Salter’s women are “described over and over again as meals for the male protagonists to enjoy and then leave behind in various western European countries,” Lidia Jean Kott argues. Read Sonya Chung’s take in our review of All That Is.
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Spying with Mountain Chicken Mother of the Buddha
Recommended Reading: Anya Groner’s short story “Suspecting the Smiths” at The Oxford American. “From the ages of nine to eleven, I worked as a spy… I discussed my cases with my partner, who went by code name Mountain Chicken Mother of the Buddha.”
Just Give Me a Minute
Is Karl Ove Kanusgaard’s seven-volume, 3,600-page, vaugely-autobiographical epic possible to pitch over the course of an elevator ride? The good people over at n+1 are willing to give it a shot! Have you ever wondered about the view outside of Knausgaard’s window? I bet you have now.
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Jenny Offill and Jia Tolentino on Being Doomers at the Dinner Party
In this event recording, the writers discuss research rabbit holes and learn the presidential election results in real time.
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Producing The Counselor
When The Counselor (trailer here) opens in theaters this month, the occasion will mark a career milestone for Cormac McCarthy. The 80-year-old novelist has been writing original screenplays since the 1970s, but only one of them – a made-for-TV movie called The Gardener’s Son – was produced before this latest effort. Over at The Wall Street Journal, Alexandra Alter takes a look at the author’s involvement in the production of The Counselor, as well as its reception by several film industry insiders and devout McCarthy fans. (“McCarthy writing a sex scene is maybe not a great idea,” one of them says.)
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Before the Fall
Calling a book “the spiritual prequel to The Road” is a great way to signal its command of dystopian tropes. It’s what Gabe Durham wrote about Maxwell Neely-Cohen’s recent YA novel Echo of the Boom. At The Rumpus, Durham interviews Neely-Cohen, who describes how he tried to give a metafictional bent to the novel. Related: we asked high school students to pick their favorite YA books of 2013.