Barnes & Noble’s newest device, Nook Tablet, was unveiled yesterday. At $249, it’s modestly more expensive than Kindle Fire at $199, but half the price of the iPad, which sells for $499 and up. And from a technological perspective, it may be closer to the iPad. So what will this mean for the last major brick-and-mortar bookseller?
Barnes & Noble’s New Bag
Return of the Literary Magazine
“If the novel is struggling in this new environment, what of literary magazines? Long extinct? The opposite: literary magazines are getting popular again.” Guardian documents the resurgence of the literary magazine, thanks to the internet.
Unruly Bodies on Medium
YiR alum Roxane Gay and Medium have collaborated on a magazine that will feature pieces throughout the month from 24 different writers. The writers all address the question “what does it mean to live in an unruly body?” and they range from Kiese Laymon to Keah Brown to Randa Jarrar.
DFW, Edited
The changes between the transcription of David Foster Wallace reading ‘A fragment of a longer thing’ in 2000 and the version of that story ‘Backbone’ as published in the recent New Yorker. (via The Paris Review)
Born Weird
Meet the man who calls his own fans “scum,” R. Crumb. Crumb first rose to prominence after the 1968 debut of Zap Comix, the first of the majorly successful “underground comix” publications. His work with legendary poet Charles Bukowski is worth taking a look.
Reasons to Remember Her Name
At Slate, William Brennan looks at the oeuvre of Shirley Jackson, whose posthumous 1968 collection, Come Along With Me, got reissued recently by Penguin.
Best Original Cave Painting
We cover a decent number of literary awards here at The Millions, but we, like most magazines, have a tendency to focus on the present. At the LARB, Andrew Nicholls makes up for this by recounting the very first book awards, in which Mooluu’s “The Beast Attacked” goes head-to-head with Kurtan the Elder’s “Why Half My Face is Missing.” You could also read our own Mark O’Connell on why we care about literary prizes to begin with.
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“You are all going to die”
“Freedom is not freedom from connection. Serial killing is freedom from connection. Certain large investment firms have established freedom from connection. But we as people never do, and we’re not supposed to, and we shouldn’t want to. We are individuals, obviously, but we are more than that.” Joss Whedon speaks to Wesleyan’s graduating class.
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