Ersatz Intellectualism

Curiosities
June 30, 2012 | 4

My favorite part of my apartment is my wall-length bookshelf. When I look at it, I think of all the time I spent reading and accumulating its contents. I feel I’ve earned it, which is why I’m slightly insulted by Juniper Books’ $3,000-$100,000 “collection-development service,” a program designed for “people who want a library but haven’t had the time or inclination to amass a collection of books.”

works on special projects for The Millions. He lives in Baltimore and he frequents dive bars. His interests can be followed on his Tumblr, Nick Recommends and Twitter, @nemoran3.

Curiosities

James Alan McPherson Passes Away

Curiosities
July 28, 2016
Pulitzer Prize-winning author James Alan McPherson has passed away at 72. His anthology Elbow Room won the Pulitzer for fiction in 1978. He was one of the first individuals to receive a genius grant from the MacArthur Foundation. He graduated from Harvard Law school, but instead decided to pursue writing and later earned an MFA from the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, where he was a professor emeritus.
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4 comments:

  2. There is, of course, nothing new about this. The rich have always wanted to look educated. Don’t you remember this part from Gatsby?:
    “The books?”

    He nodded.

    “Absolutely real–have pages and everything. I thought they’d be a nice durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they’re absolutely real. Pages and– Here! Lemme show you.”

    Taking our skepticism for granted, he rushed to the bookcases and returned with Volume One of the “Stoddard Lectures.”

    “See!” he cried triumphantly. “It’s a bona-fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fella’s a regular Belasco. It’s a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop, too–didn’t cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?”

    http://books.google.com/books?id=EFi2RVvX3wsC&lpg=PT51&dq=Absolutely%20real–have%20pages%20and%20everything.&pg=PT51#v=onepage&q=Absolutely%20real–have%20pages%20and%20everything.&f=false

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Curiosities

A Liquid State

Curiosities
September 18, 2016
“Thus it is our [feminists’] historical task ... to define what we call oppression in materialist terms, to make it evident that women are a class, which is to say that the category ‘woman’ as well as the category ‘man’ are political and economic categories, not eternal ones.” This essay in remembrance of Alexis Arquette touches on everything from VIP guest lists to feminist theorist Monique Wittig.
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Curiosities

Monday Links

Curiosities
February 5, 2007
We've got some great stuff in the pipeline at The Millions, starting with a lierary magazine roundtable (part one of which will be up shortly), but before we get to that a couple of quick links:This week at the LBC we're discussing our winter 2007 Read This! selection, Wizard of the Crow by Ngugl wa Thiong'o. A roundtable discussion kicks off a week that will include a contest, an interview, a podcast, and more.Speaking of the LBC, a past selection, and one of my favorites from among the books we've read, Firmin by Sam Savage, has been named a finalist for the Barnes & Noble 2006 Discover Great New Writers Awards. That little rat just keeps on trucking along.And finally, Robert Birnbaum sits down with Richard Ford (again) for another great interview. Thanks to Millions contributor Noah, we had some great coverage of Ford's most recent book, The Lay of the Land, in November, including a review, a reader question, and a (very brief) interview..
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