We’re welcoming another regular to The Millions. You’ll recognize Jacob Lambert from his ongoing series “The Road (A Comedic Translation),” and he’ll be doing more humor pieces for us as well as whatever else he comes up with. Jacob has written for MAD Magazine for several years. He also has a regular column in Philly Weekly and freelances for various other publications. Welcome Jacob!
Welcome Jacob!
Breaking the English Ceiling
This year’s Forward Prize went to the poet Jorie Graham, whose collection The Dream of the Unified Field won the Pulitzer in ’94. Graham is the first American woman to win the prize.
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Just in time for Halloween…
Martin Scorsese presents his picks for the eleven (?) scariest movies of all time. Apparently he stopped watching horror films around the time he directed Mean Streets…
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Natasha Trethewey Reading
You can listen to U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey read her poem “Enlightenment” for the Virginia Festival of the Book.
Expiration Date
“Echoes are etched into the pages thanks to margin-scrawled notes, a yellowed coffee splatter or sticky peanut-butter-and-jelly fingerprints.” In her project “Expired,” photographer Kerry Mansfield documents the life of library books. We suggest pairing The Guardian‘s gallery of her photos with our own Jacob Lambert‘s “Open Letter to the Person Who Wiped Boogers on My Library Book.”
Are Book Blurbs Helpful or Harmful?
Man Booker judge Colin Thubron expressed frustration with gushing book blurbs, which he says “almost blackmail” readers: “you’re either intellectually or morally incompetent if you don’t love this book or you’ve failed if you haven’t understood it.” Our own Bill Morris tackled the age old question—”To Blurb or not Blurb”—a few years ago.
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Moco Loco
On the new food-writing website Toque, Elina Shatkin takes chefs Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo (owners of Animal, the wonderful L.A. restaurant exalting all things meaty) to try moco loco.
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The Other Side
“Paris had more sex than most church-laden places, and more church than most sex-laden places.” Luc Sante’s new book, The Other Paris, seeks to uncover Paris’s sedimentary layers of filth and grit. Here he is in an interview with Guernica Magazine.
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