Hooray! Electric Literature has declared Jesse Jarnow’s Millions review of Fear of Music the winner in the category of Best Deconstruction for their occasional Critical Hit Awards.
The Millions at the Critical Hit Awards
“Intellectual Terrorist”
If last year’s The Marriage Plot was too brief a taste of semiotics for you, here’s an interesting essay on Jacques Derrida, “the Samson to tear down the temple of structuralism,” and his seminal 1966 American presentation on “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences.”
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A 2BR/2BA of your Own
Broke New York writers – by which we mean, New York writers – take note: the city’s Department of Housing is allotting a small number of $1,022 two-bedroom apartments to working artists through a convenient online application. (If that’s too rich for your blood, though, we’ve also noted previously that Write a House is giving away free houses to writers in Detroit.)
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A Daredevil By Any Other Name
Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life might well be the only book in history to draw comparisons between creative writers and stunt pilots. At Brain Pickings, Maria Popova calls attention to a description of Dave Rahm, the real-life pilot who inspired Dillard’s analogy.
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Jack White, Publisher
Recommended reading: Lauren O’Neal writes for the LA Review of Books about analog music, Millennial poetry and Jack White‘s foray into publishing.
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How the Fulbright Started
“Whatever the [Fulbright] program became,” writes Boston Globe correspondent Sam Lebovic, “it was first conceived as a budget-priced megaphone to transmit American ideas to the world, rather than as a genuine international dialogue.” Indeed, one 1940s newspaper columnist dubbed the program “an ingenious piece of higher mathematics…[that] found a way to finance out of the sale of war junk a worldwide system of American scholarships.”
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Telegraph Alternates
Will Staehle designed the cover art for Michael Chabon’s latest novel, Telegraph Avenue (Millions review), and his finished project is certainly eye-catching. But what of the designs that didn’t make the final cut? Over at the Huffington Post, you can take a look at some of his other ideas.
Justice and Prayer
“Dear publisher, I am sorry if I do so few of these stories justice. Someone else surely will. I don’t know what justice for a book is but I think I saw it as I prayed over this one.” Matthew Jakubowski reviews Diane Williams’ latest collection Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine at Minor Literature[s]. You could also read his reviews of Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi’s Fra Keeler and Margriet de Moor’s The Storm at The Millions.
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