Sarah Wienman, the news editor for Publisher’s Marketplace, offers some great tips for aspiring literary journalists. Once you’ve looked them over, maybe you’ll even want to pitch The Millions for our #LitBeat Tumblr feature? If so, just send me an email with the details of the event you’d like to cover.
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The Inspiration for Uncle Tom’s Cabin
A professor at Clemson University believes he’s identified the fugitive slave who was harbored for one night in the home of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Moreover, the professor believes that the man was “an inspiration for the novel [Uncle Tom’s Cabin]. I think his pain touched [Stowe] and helped her to act.”
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Endless Depths
Every so often, a piece comes along that rends the fragile mind, employing a devil’s portion of mundane details to lay bare the inescapable futility of all human endeavor. This is the only rational way to describe this piece at The Awl, which takes the form of a conversation between Karl Ove Knausgaard and True Detective’s Nic Pizzolatto.
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Cohen’s New Old Ideas
Leonard Cohen's new album Old Ideas is getting glowing reviews. Slate says of Cohen, "When it comes to lyrics, he’s second to no one—including Dylan."
Arrested Development Meets Academia
“Dr. Kristin M. Barton is seeking proposals for an edited volume … which will explore Arrested Development from a scholarly perspective,” reads a call for submissions on H-Net. I can see the titles of these essays now. Can’t you? “Desperation Economics: There’s Always Money in the Banana Stand” or “I Don’t Know What I Was Expecting: An Exploration of Dead Doves and Tragicomedy.”
Scream for ‘The Scream’
A recent study by the American Psychological Association finds "people are more likely to be moved and intrigued by abstract paintings if they have just experienced a good scare."
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Tuesday New Release Day: Sayles, Mieville, Theroux, Habila, Drabble, Donoghue, Cronin
The huge, McSweeney's-published, John Sayles novel A Moment in the Sun has been getting great reviews. It's now out. Also new this week is China Mieville's Embassytown, reviewed here today; Paul Theroux's exploration of the genre of travel writing, The Tao of Travel; prizewinning Nigerian author Helon Habila's new novel Oil on Water; and A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman, the complete stories of Margaret Drabble, recently written up by Joyce Carol Oates in the New Yorker. New in paperback are a pair of Millions Hall of Famers, Emma Donoghue's Room and Justin Cronin's The Passage.
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Cow Country
Deep Springs College in Eastern California is a “bonkers, hyper-isolated, working cattle ranch slash all-male two-year university” that caters to the Lonely White Male mythology. Deep Springs alumni have been awarded, among many other honors, Rhodes and Truman Scholarships, MacArthur “genius grants”, Pulitzer Prizes, and an Emmy. And now, dear readers, they’re building a women’s college which promises to be every bit as unique as its forebear. Yay?
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