“I’ve been writing about ‘real’ characters and placing them in a shaped, or fictional, world. Writing TransAtlantic, there was never really a plan, at the early stages, to question the line between fiction and nonfiction. I just went on instinct, and then these worlds started to braid.” The Rumpus interviews Colum McCann.
Talking with Colum McCann
ICYMI
“People write to me to let me know that, in case I missed it, there are only two genders.” Year in Reading alum Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts, speaks to The Guardian about gender, family, and her personal life.
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Parul Sehgal Wins NBCC Award for Excellence in Reviewing
Parul Sehgal, nonfiction editor at Publisher's Weekly (and sister of The Millions intern Ujala Sehgal), has been awarded the National Books Critics Circle "Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing." Previous winners include Joan Acocella, Ron Charles, and Sam Anderson. The award was based on her diverse portfolio of work as a reviewer, including a review of Susie Linfield's The Cruel Radiance, a review of Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra: A Life, and her piece on David Abram's Becoming Animal. Congratulations!
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Body Language
I’ve written before about By Heart, a series at The Atlantic in which authors write short pieces about their favorite passages in literature. This week, our own Edan Lepucki -- whose new novel you may have heard about thanks to Stephen Colbert -- writes about the metaphors in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. (FYI, Margaret Atwood wrote a Year in Reading entry for The Millions.)
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“More allegorical than real”
Recommended Reading: Deborah Friedell on Ian McEwan’s The Children Act.
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Robinson, Lila and NPR
Recommended listening: Marilynne Robinson talks with NPR about about her latest novel, Lila, which we covered in our "Great Second-Half 2014 Book Preview" and which Leslie Jamison recently reviewed for The Atlantic.
Celebrating America’s Birthday
It was America’s birthday this week. Celebrate with quintessential American fiction, according to the rest of the world (via LitHub). More of a poetry person? We search for the great American epic.
White Noise on White Noise
"In the silence, there is solitude. In the solitude, there is silence. This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature." Don DeLillo, author of White Noise, "reviews" Taylor Swift's white noise for The Atlantic.
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To Believe Your Own Thought
Recommended Reading: Sophie Atkinson on Frank Ocean as Emersonian hero.
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