“Behind every great work, there is an ink-stained piece of notebook paper.” Here is the first page of a handwritten draft of Infinite Jest.
First Draft of Infinite Jest
Prime Viewing
For any Amazon Prime members out there, Amazon has rolled out a selection of streaming movies and TV shows available for free with your Prime membership.
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How the Sausage Gets Made
“Being a judge for the Man Booker prize has at times felt like being part of a team of archaeologists excavating some vast buried city. Once the dust has settled – after nine months of reading – you stand back to survey your labours and realise all that’s left is a small pile of gleaming fragments. I hadn’t expected the process to be quite so emotionally exhausting. Nor had I thought it would be quite so exhilarating.” In case you’re curious, a Man Booker Prize arbiter offers up his reflections on the judging process. See also: the shortlist itself, which has surprised many readers!
Vote for The Millions!
A number of the best essays from the last year on The Millions have been nominated for the 3 Quarks Daily 2010 Arts & Literature Prize. We need your votes to get these Millions essays through to the next round! Please take a few seconds and vote for your favorite. Then tell your friends and family to vote too!
Good News for Libraries… Or Is It?
Pew Research published 10 Facts About Americans and Public Libraries, and some of the findings may surprise you. For example, would you have guessed that 26% of library patrons say their use has gone up in the past five years? Other findings, of course, won’t shock anybody — such as the fact that e-reading is on the rise, which, as I noted two years ago, poses some serious ecological challenges.
Australian Best
Lit-mag Meanjin Quarterly is taking a cue from The Millions and kicking off a new series, The Best Australian Fiction of the 21st Century (so far).
On O’Casey
As Seán O’Casey’s play “The Silver Tassie” is revived at London’s National Theatre, three Irish actors tell The Guardian how they feel about famed playwright. “I’d say he’s on a par with your Shakespeare,” Niamh Cusack says.
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