Small Demons presents Storyverse, a website in which users are invited to explore the connections between their favorite books and the people, places, and cultural artifacts out of which they are woven. It’s difficult to explain, but painless to enjoy thanks to a beautiful GUI.
A Web of Allusions
Testimonies
At the LARB, Millions contributor Nathan Deuel reviews Silence Once Begun by Jesse Ball, which we covered as part of our Great 2014 Book Preview. Nathan calls the novel “daring and odd” and notes that, as the plot advances, “even we readers become slightly shaky witnesses.” You can learn more about Jesse Ball’s work in our own Janet Potter’s review of his novel The Curfew.
Does NASA Use Emoji?
You can sign up to receive a text alert from NASA notifying you when the International Space Station is scheduled to fly over your house.
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Dear Diary
"Despite its brevity, the diary is an illuminating document that offers a glimpse into the mind of the artist as a young woman." The never-before-seen diary of Flannery O’Connor has been published in Image, an arts and faith quarterly, and reveals the shadow of the writer she would become. See also: our own Nick Ripatrazone on teaching O'Connor.
Updike the Cartoonist
"Updike stopped cartooning while he was an undergraduate at Harvard. This is a factually true statement, but it ignores a larger reality. While Updike might have ceased cartooning, the visual language of comics was never far from his mind. Cartooning was an inextricable strand in his creative DNA." Jeet Heer writes about John Updike, cartooning, fandom and "bedesque" prose for The Paris Review. Pair with James Santel's Millions essay on "The Curious Paradox of John Updike."
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Post-Apocalypse Now
"I’ve turned paranoid lately. When I’m in an airport, I look at the people around me at the gate, trying to suss out who might make a good ally if things went bad. I carry two plastic tubs full of warm clothes, hiking boots, and first-aid supplies in the back of my Subaru at all times. I have as large a volume of canned and dry goods in my pantry and laundry room as the shelves will hold." Rebecca Onion for Slate on the appeal and contagion of "prepper fiction." Pair with our review of Claire Vaye Watkins's Gold Fame Citrus, one of the recent bumper crop of apocalyptic narratives.
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