At the helm of The Paris Review‘s advice column this week, Sasha Frere-Jones describes Sheila Heti‘s How Should a Person Be ? as the inverse of Elaine Dundy‘s The Dud Avacado.
A person should not be a dud avacado?
Thank Your Mother
Recommended (and timely!) reading: Christy Wampole on why “You Will Never Be Able to Thank Your Mother Enough.”
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The Future of Work
Can Google help translate a novel? Over at Publishers Weekly, Esther Allen explores Google Translates’ linguistic abilities. Also check out this Millions essay about translators at work.
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Islands: Remote and Suspicious
If you dug Judith Schalansky‘s Atlas of Remote Islands (a Millions Hall-of-Famer), you should check out cartographer Victoria Johnson‘s list of “suspicious-sounding islands.”
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Raise a Glass to Kingsley Amis
New Yorkers! Come out tonight and celebrate Kingsley Amis alongside the Volume 1 Brooklyn crew, the New York Review of Books Classics publishers, and also such guests as Parul Sehgal, Rosie Schaap, and Maud Newton. There will be free gin! However if you can’t make it, you can treat yourself to the Kingsley Amis Desert Island Discs from the comfort of your own home. The discs, recorded around the time The Old Devils was published, reveal the author’s views on “novel mechanics,” the “Welsh temperament,” and his affinity for jazz.
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Interview with Margaret Drabble
Recommended reading: Lydia Perović talks with Margaret Drabble for The Believer about feminist fiction, the Aeneid, Iris Murdoch and writing female characters.
“The Realest Language”
Recommended reading: The Awl takes a look at the “attempt to create a completely logical, absolutely universal language,” which goes about as well as you’d expect (read: not very).
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Tuesday New Release Day: Gartner, Talib, McLain, Lively
Out today are Zsuzsi Gartner’s Better Living Through Plastic Explosives, which was shortlisted for Canada’s top literary prize, and Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder bestselling expert on chaos Nassim Talib. Out in paperback: The Paris Wife by Paula McLain and How It All Began by Penelope Lively.
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The Great American Male Novel
The New York Times recently asked Jennifer Szalai and Mohsin Hamid why there isn’t a Great American Novel written by a woman? Both writers concluded that there is no such thing as the Great American Novel. “But if the idea of the Great American Novel is blinding us to exquisite fiction written by women, then perhaps its harm is exceeding its usefulness,” Hamid wrote. We think that’s a bit of a cop out. But a few women showed up on our list of the Greatest American Novels.
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