Steven Pinker‘s The Better Angels of Our Nature posits that human violence is becoming less and less common in civilized culture. If your interest was piqued by the book’s review in The New York Times, you will no doubt be interested in his Edge Master Class as well.
The Better Angels of Our Nature
The Rooster Bequeathed
In a real nail-biter, the winner of this year's Tournament of Books is...
Illness as Metaphor
Melissa Broder shares her thoughts on open marriage and illness in an excerpt from her So Sad Today. Pair with Gila Lyons’s Millions essay on writing through illness.
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The Right Kind of Ambivalence
In the latest entry in By Heart, which I’ve written about before, Thirty Girls author Susan Minot explains why she prefers to read multiple books at once instead of reading through single books from start to finish. Her reasoning? Books are “worlds to dip in and out of, and my relationship to them is continually deepening and evolving.”
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TLAN News
Three Guys One Book takes an early look at The Late American Novel (co-edited by yours truly and featuring three Millions writers as well as a number of other literary luminaries) and sees it as a great introduction to a whole group of exciting writers. The book has been spotted on shelves in the wild, and we'll be updating news about the book here. (Readers can also follow the book's official Facebook page to keep up on events, reviews and other goodies.)
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Broadcasting the Atocha Station
An A+ radio interview with Leaving the Atocha Station author Ben Lerner, you say? Why, yes, I think that's right up my alley.
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“Against Explanation”
"I don’t know how to give more of myself than a poem. Every poem I write is more accurate than anything I can ever tweet about it: my interior life, and its struggle and desire to converse with the exterior world." Tarfia Faizullah writes for Poetry's blog about why she doesn't want to explain her poems, the power of breath, and the frustrating implications of the question, "did it happen to you?"
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“It is not enough to have his idea.”
Recommended Reading: Four poems by Darin Ciccotelli are up at BOMB.
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