The biggest release of the week is, of course, the launch of the first Millions Original, Epic Fail (here’s our excerpt), by our own Mark O’Connell (We may be a bit biased there). Also out, Sam Roberts’s Grand Central, about the iconic train station, and, now available for the first time in a single, massive paperback volume, Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84.
Tuesday New Release Day: Epic Fail, Roberts, Murakami
Feeling Lonely Tonight?
Jeff Ragsdale (Jeff, One Lonely Guy) produced, shot and edited an “immersion documentary” in which he accompanied Canadian escorts on hundreds of calls over a span of several months. The half-hour film is entitled “30 Nights with a Call Girl.” Millions readers may recall Ragsdale’s work from its mention in our own Sonya Chung’s essay “On Loneliness.”
Nabokov’s Notes
Vladimir Nabokov spent twenty years translating “the first and fundamental Russian novel,” Aleksandr Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. His battle with the text sparked an intellectual debate with his former friend, Edmund Wilson. The Paris Review has his notes. Pair with our own Lydia Kiesling’s thoughts on Lolita.
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New Coen Brothers Trailer
Recommended Viewing: The trailer for Joel and Ethan Coen’s forthcoming film, Inside Llewyn Davis.
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Calvin!
“Calvin and Hobbes is certainly not a text about queerness, yet when I returned to it at this altered point in my life, the strip suddenly seemed to describe things that resonated with me now: what it was like to live in a world where expressing your realest self is so often penalized, and the value of finding a second family, a close friend or friends, if your blood family fails to understand or accept the truest version of you.” Gabrielle Bellot at The Literary Hub explains why Calvin and Hobbes is great literature.
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Sturm und Drang
“For Germany, the Wagners are what the Atreidai are in Greek mythology. One of them, Atreus, committed a grave sin, casting a curse over all subsequent generations, beginning with Agamemnon and Menelaus, followed by Iphigenia, Orestes and Electra. The family is marked by enmity, as is the Wagner family.” On a certain influential composer.
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