Daniel Orozco‘s Orientation collects many of his short stories in one attractive volume. Released last May, the collection features the classic story “Orientation” (Scribd) as well as newer ones such as “Shakers” (Scribd). It garnered enough hype to land him on the long list for this year’s Frank O’Connor Award.
Daniel Orozco’s Orientation
Life and Fate
Kenneth Branagh and David Tennant star in an eight-hour dramatization of Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman. Completed in 1960, and centered around the bloody battle of Stalingrad, the novel was deemed so dangerous by the KGB that the book itself was arrested. BBC’s excited, and all the episodes are available to download.
RIP MCA
Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch AKA MCA has died at 47, due to cancer. Pitchfork has more.
Turn Left There
Francois Vincent of McSweeney’s has published his hilarious take on asking for directions in short stories. Pair with this list of forty-five of The Millions’s favorite short story collections of all time.
Something Borrowed, Something Stolen
Is Kenneth Goldsmith continuing to lead the charge in a revolutionary poetry movement? Has he overstepped his bounds? Is conceptual poetry dead? Alec Wilkinson for The New Yorker and Cathy Park Hong for The New Republic offer their opinions.
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Breaking Point
One of the better reasons you should read this review of the new book Breakfast with Freud is this quote, in reference to a Lucian Freud painting: “Robert Hughes compared [Francis] Bacon’s face in it to ‘a hand grenade on the point of detonation.’”
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