Thanks to all The Millions readers who have supported the site over the last several months. If you are heading back to school now, check out our Support page to see how you can support the site without taking any extra dollars from your pockets. Advertisers: We have been seeing some great ads on the site of late. Check out the Blog Ads Book Hive to advertise on The Millions and other great literary sites.
We Appreciate Your Support
TransAtlantic Sneak Peek
The folks at Goodreads provide an exclusive sneak peek at Colum McCann’s forthcoming novel, TransAtlantic. The book, which will publish in June, was featured on our Great 2013 Book Preview a few months back.
●
●
He Found Himself Changed
Happy(ish) birthday, Gregor Samsa! Here’s a piece from NPR commemorating the 100th anniversary of the publication of Franz Kafka’s masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. Kafka insisted that the story’s insect should never be drawn, but of course Vladimir Nabokov had his own ideas about that. To round out the Kafka news, here’s a review from The Millions of Reiner Stach’s Kafka: The Decisive Years.
Writing Desire
●
●
Watching Alice Munro
You may have heard that Alice Munro couldn’t make it to Sweden to accept this year’s Nobel prize. Instead, she made a video, which you can watch in full on the Nobel Prize committee’s website. (You could also read Ben Dolnick’s beginner’s guide to her work, or else read my essay on the meaning of her win.) (h/t The Paris Review)
Hard to Categorize
The Naipaul Question, as Morgan Meis calls it, is simple: is V.S. Naipaul too offensive to be taken seriously? His recent biography includes scenes of abuse and moments of straightforward racism. But Meis thinks the issue is more complicated than whether Naipaul is a monster — the author is, in his phrasing, too “protean” to be pinned down.
●
●
On the Rise of the Mass Intelligentsia
The intelligentsia has been growing larger and more democratic for hundreds of years, but the spread of today’s mass intelligentsia “is arguably happening on a far larger scale,” writes Philosophy For Life author Jules Evans.