Betty Wants In and the Melbourne Skydive Centre have been churning out some simply amazing footage of sky divers, parachutists, and base jumpers. Check out their latest installment, Experience Freedom, and be blown away. (Previously: Experience Human Flight, Experience Zero Gravity.)
Sky Dive From Your Desk
The 3 Quarks Daily annual Arts and Literature Prize!
The 3 Quarks Daily annual prize for Arts and Literature blog writing has been announced! Nominations are open in the comments of the announcement. This year’s judge is author, professor, blogger, intellect Laila Lalami. Dear readers, feel free to nominate any Millions writing you enjoyed here. And to the guest contributors out there, be sure to nominate your Millions contributions!
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Perfectly Imperfect Proust
In a piece for the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik writes about a new life of C. K. Scott Moncrieff, the first translator of Proust into English, and about the strange success and beauty his imperfect translation of Remembrance of Things Past achieved. The essay as a whole pairs well with both our own Bill Morris‘s essay against literary biography and Barclay Bram Shoemaker‘s Millions review of Mo Yan‘s Frog and “the trouble with translation.”
A Poetry Reading Workshop
“Poets ought to learn how to present work as well as produce it,” says Joe Weil, who shares some invaluable Tips for Doing a Poetry Reading. (Bonus: our own Janet Potter offers a tutorial on the appropriate way to introduce an author [or poet] before their reading.)
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Eating Well
David Lebovitz, author of The Perfect Scoop, suggests 10 ways to improve your cooking. Not so sure I agree with whole wheat pasta, but I certainly support calls for fresh herbs and lots of shallots… (via)
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After the Storm, a Novel
“What stereotypes will they critique, destroy, or create? What, in other words, will the post-earthquake novel reveal about Haiti’s most recent losses, obstacles, and hopes for the future?” Patti Marxsen on the post-earthquake Haitian novel, over at The Critical Flame.
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PEN Literary Award Longlists Released
The final PEN Literary Award Longlists are posted today! Check out all of the lists here. Longlisters include Angela Flournoy (whom we interviewed, and who has written a Year in Reading for us), Marilynne Robinson (who is known for her singular vision), Renata Adler (about whom we have made six possibly true observations), and David L. Ulin (whose Year in Reading is here).
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“Getting Angry, Baby?”
The fiftieth anniversary of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is coming up on October 13th, so to get ready, pour yourself a drink (or five), don your best academic tweeds, and read these interviews with playwright Edward Albee and audience members who attended the play’s original 1962 run.