At The Rumpus, the controversy over Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom is in comic form, featuring Lt. Safran Foer, Jennifer Weiner, Captain Shteyngart, and Emperor Franzen himself.
Freedom Controversy, in Comic Form
The Tragedy Interviews
One of Tumblr's most consistently enjoyable accounts belongs to Ben Dewey, comic book artist and proprietor of The Tragedy Series. This past week, Mr. Dewey gave two interviews about his work.
Steinbeck the Spy
When John Steinbeck wasn't busy writing 600-page novels, he might have been a Cold War CIA spy. In 1952, Steinbeck approached the CIA and suggested he could do some spying on an upcoming European trip. "The pace and method of my junket together with my intention of talking with great numbers of people of all classes may offer peculiar advantages," he wrote to an agent.
The Best Books of the Year (2013)
Amazon released their annual Best Books of the Year: Top 100 in Print list today (as well as a free and helpful Reader’s Guide), and numerous Millions favorites made the cut. Both George Saunders’s Tenth of December and Philipp Meyer’s The Son cracked the top 10. We reviewed both here and here, respectively. Other notable books boasting extensive Millions coverage include Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings (review), George Packer’s The Unwinding (review), Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries (review), Dave Eggers’s The Circle (review), James Salter’s All That Is (review), Karen Russell’s Vampires in the Lemon Grove (interview), Stuart Nadler’s Wise Men (review), Colum McCann’s TransAtlantic (review), and Colm Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary (review). Meanwhile, the top spot belongs to Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch.
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He’ll Ask You For a Napkin
Mallory Ortberg of The Toast, whose Ayn Rand-inspired versions of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and You’ve Got Mail we told you about a few months ago, is back it at again. Now Rand (er, I mean, Ortberg) has her sights set on the dubiously libertarian children’s classic If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. If we give you the article, you’ll probably ask us for an essay by Gary Percesepe about meeting Ayn Rand’s editor to go along with it.