Over the past week, the work of three Millions staffers has been shown off for other publications: Mark O’Connell talks Lethem, Dyer and Batuman for Slate; Emily St. John Mandel talks noir for Beyond the Margins; and Garth Risk Hallberg names his selection for this year’s Pulitzer-less Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Appearing Elsewhere
Little Beasties
Recommended Viewing: Over at The New Yorker, Comma Queen Mary Norris tackles the big question we didn’t know we needed answered — what pronouns do you use for your pets?
Tuesday Links: More LBC, Bookride, Vonnegut
My nominee for this round has been posted at the LBC blog. Though it didn’t grab my cohorts enough to be named our “Read This” pick, I do highly recommend it.I recently happened upon bookride, a blog by a rare book dealer that each day posts about a valuable book, explaining why the book is collectible and why it’s worth what it is. Fascinating stuff. A recent post looks at a rare copy of The Waste Land.Simon at Bloggasm rounded up a bunch tributes to Kurt Vonnegut including a slightly modified version of my post from last week.
Books Nobody Reads
Maybe nobody read your first, or last, most recent or only book, but writer, take heart: nobody read the work of these 10 great authors either.
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Weather Advisory
“These are not stories about the weather, these are stories about life and death.” Over at Ploughshares, E.V. De Cleyre considers the weather in contemporary literature.
You ninnie-hammer flycatcher!
Short on insult fodder? In that case you’ll want to read Colin Burrow’s review of Melissa Mohr’s Holy Shit: A Brief History of Swearing. It includes such notables as: “slapsauce fellows, slabberdegullion druggels, lubbardly lowts … slutch calf-lollies, grouthead gnat-snappers, lob-dotterels, gaping changelings, [and] codshead loobies.” In the end, “swearing is one of the most basic human acts,” he writes.
D.H. Lawrence at 21
“If you would write, try to be terse and in some measure original—the world abounds with new similes and metaphors… If you cannot tell people of something they have not seen, or have not thought, it is hardly worthwhile to write at all.” The Paris Review shares writing advice from a 21-year-old D.H. Lawrence .