“Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, and Charles Dickens wrote about opium smoking in their novels. But if you read the way they describe opium smoking, without a doubt these people never saw the real thing. It’s laughable…What we see in movies, even to this day, with the obligatory London opium-smoking scene is complete fiction.” Interview with a modern-day opium addict.
Confessions of a Modern Opium Smoker
5000 Books Thrown Out in OWS Raid
More than 5,000 books in the Occupy Wall Street library were reportedly thrown away when police moved in to remove protesters from Zuccotti Park in New York early Tuesday. A judge has signed an order allowing protesters to return to Zuccotti Park with their belongings; further court action is expected Tuesday. What that means for the books, no one yet knows.
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Next time I’d like a literary juice box too.
Yesterday Maria Popova, aka the mastermind behind Brain Pickings, launched her latest project: Literary Jukebox. I’m definitely gonna recommend this to Nick Moran for his next Great Tumblr Taxonomy.
Born Without Choosing
“[Don] DeLillo’s characters long to penetrate the enigmas and intrigues of his conjured worlds; DeLillo’s readers devour his sentences, images and narratives for what amounts to something similar: for all that DeLillo — the seeker, the prophet, the mystic, the guide — sees.” Don DeLillo has a new book, Zero K, out tomorrow. Go check out this review from The New York Times, and then go take a look at this essay from The Millions’s own Nick Ripatrazone on DeLillo and American athletics.
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Good Sports
Isn’t it lovely when books and sports coexist (somewhat) peacefully? In the spirit of the Major League Baseball ALCS playoff between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Kansas City Royals, the Twitter accounts of the Toronto and Kansas City public libraries took to the internet to air their grievances. Unfortunately for the folks in Toronto, Kansas City went on to win the game and advance to the World Series with the New York Mets. For more on the intersection of sports and reading, check out the Football Book Club.
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Room Service With Proust
You might never be able to finish Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, but you can stay in his hotel. France is marketing its literary heritage with hotels named after famous authors. At the aforementioned Marcel, guests can stay in rooms named after Proust characters. If you aren’t a fan of madeleines, you can check into the R Kipling or Le Pavillon des Lettres.
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Happy Birthday, Baldwin
Yesterday was James Baldwin’s birthday. Revisit “Stranger in the Village” or Justin Campbell’s essay on fatherhood and Baldwin in celebration of his life.
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David Mitchell’s Next Novel
In an interview about his Russian fans, Cloud Atlas author David Mitchell shares some details about his next book project. Put simply, “It’s about an immortal being that gets reincarnated as different men and women,” Mitchell says.
New Novel from David Mitchell
David Mitchell fans, good news! The author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas will publish a new novel called Slade House this coming October. Even better? It’s based on his short-story-via-Twitter, “The Right Sort,” which The Millions first collected and published.
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Opium and it’s paraphernalia has always struck me as a drug with strong literary potential. It’s mystique and exoticism seem irresistible, but the only modern mentions I’ve seen have been by squares and bores. The one and only time I smoked it was one of the most pleasurable experiences I’ve ever had.
Unforgivable “its” typo. Sorry.