The LA Times‘ Festival of Books is happening this weekend, and attendees have not one, not two, but three chances to see Millions staffers Patrick Brown and Edan Lepucki. On Saturday, Patrick will be hanging out on the Nuts and Bolts publishing panel, and on Sunday, he’ll be moderating one entitled Art of Immersion. Also on Sunday, Edan will moderate the Visionary Eyes fiction panel with Aimee Bender, Mark Leyner, Ben Ehrenreich, and Elizabeth Crane.
The Festival of Books is Upon Us!
Every height of brow
Putting aside for a moment the racist phrenological roots of the terms “highbrow” and “lowbrow,” here’s an interesting conversation on what the difference between them means for literature now. For a historical take, check out this graphic from a 1949 edition of LIFE magazine, which taught me a real gentleman wears fuzzy tweed, and iceberg lettuce is never in style.
The Rude Writer
In the September issue of Elle, Lorrie Moore talks about why being a writer means being creepily detached and rude. Redux here at Jezebel.
Vintage Interview with Jaimy Gordon
While you’re waiting to get your hands on Lord of Misrule, the National Book Award winner by Jaimy Gordon, Gargoyle Magazine posts an interview with Gordon from 1983. (via The Paris Review).
Raymond Chandler on How to Write Detective Stories
“The good detective story writer (there must after all be a few) competes not only with all the unburied dead but with all the hosts of the living as well. And on almost equal terms; for it is one of the qualities of this kind of writing that the thing that makes people read it never goes out of style.” Raymond Chandler’s 1950 essay, “The Simple Art of Murder” is a real gem.
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The Beating of Rodney King, Take Two
Rodney King, possibly the nation’s best-known victim of police brutality, will fight former Pennsylvania police officer Simon Aouad in a celebrity boxing match in Philadelphia on September 12. “I know some people will see the irony here,” King said. I’m not sure irony’s the word, but it’s something alright.
Brian Oliu’s Video Game Essays
This week Uncanny Valley Press released Leave Luck to Heaven, Brian Oliu’s collection of lyric essays based on “the weird, painful things we made NES games carry for us because we didn’t know where else to put them.” To get a taste for Oliu’s style, check out “Mile Zero,” which will be featured in a different manuscript down the line.
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“God put the needle on the disc of Saturn / The record he played revealed blueprints and patterns”
GZA has teamed up with top cosmologists and physicists from MIT and Cornell to produce his latest album, Dark Matter. The album is the first in a series “designed to get a wide audience hooked on science.”
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Teaching STEM: Comics to Video Games
While the federal government is turning to video games to get kids into the math and sciences, back in the day comic books provided a near-direct link to young minds. But the medium wasn’t warmly received by the older generation (sound familiar?), and the company debated whether it was worth taking a hit with parents in order to appeal to their kids.
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