Christopher Michel discusses The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov – a book that challenges the long-held consensus that Nabokov was merely an aesthete.
Necessary Nabokov
Appearing Elsewhere
AWP Attendees: Millions editor and founder C. Max Magee will be on a panel at AWP on Friday. "Ask Not What the Internet Can Do for You: Shifting Our Perspective on Internet Publishing as an Alternative to Major Market Publishing" will discuss electronic publications as central to the needs of 21st-century writers and readers, and not as entities serving as secondary iterations of preexisting publications. The panel is at 3pm in Virginia A Room, Marriott Wardman Park, Lobby Level. See you there!
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Free That Verse
From the Beat poet to the particularly heroic couplet, here's a handy illustration of poetic justice from Grant Snider over at The New York Times.
The Leonine Vladimir Sorokin
Now online: PEN World Voices video of Keith Gessen interviewing Vladimir Sorokin, author of the just-released Ice Trilogy and Day of the Oprichnik. I was a little nonplussed by the Times' decision to begin its profile of Sorokin with a discussion of his hair, but really...it is quite something. Come for the mane, stay for the acerbic insights.
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Opiates
“The cause of death/was living/the immediate cause/of death was/living in Moscow.” At n +1's website, Ainsley Morse and Bela Shayevich excerpt their translations of the Soviet poet Vsevolod Nekrasov.
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Drinking Heavy Cream
That writing and coffee go hand in hand is no surprise, but drinking heavy cream from a coffee mug? That's a little unusual, even for Agatha Christie. Flavorwire has collected 9 of the oddest food rituals of famous writers, and their list pairs well with this infographic on writing and snacks, and with Seth Sawyers's Millions essay on food and reading, "Because I, Too, Am Hungry."