Recommended: Meagan Day on Joan Didion’s essay “In the Realm of the Fisher King,” which you can find in Didion’s collection After Henry.
What Really Happened in the 1980s
The Millions Turns Nine
The Millions turned nine years old this past weekend. I want to thank the writers, editors, and interns for another great year. And I especially want to thank our smart, passionate, and engaged readers for continuing to make The Millions such a fulfilling project for all of us.
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“Hypothetical representation of a language”
When your invented language gets out of hand: the story of Ithkuil.
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Give Me Free Reading Time or Give Me Death
If the looming election has you feeling like you might need a change of address on November 9th, you might (might) consider the United Arab Emirates. Vice President Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, has implemented a groundbreaking initiative which requires government employers to give workers an allotment of free time for reading. Sheikh Mohammed had this to say to novelist Paulo Coelho's praise of the initiative, "Did you know, Paulo, that in the 9th century, our region had over 100 publishing houses on the outskirts of Baghdad alone? … When its life was centered on books, Baghdad was, my friend, a beacon in the worlds of astronomy, medicine, mathematics and philosophy. Where is Baghdad today?”"
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Saul Bellow, “Wise Guy”
Writing for The Dublin Review of Books, Kevin Stevens reviews Saul Bellow: Letters, the collected correspondence of “Wise Guy” Saul Bellow, “one of America’s best writers and most interesting men.”
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Bread, Bread, Bread
From "Insufficient Milk And Restraint" to "Eating Berries While Pretending To Be A Monk To Make Hunger And Desperation Feel Like A Game," here is every meal from Jane Eyre ranked in terms of severity.
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Everything I Despise
Can you tell the difference between complaints by Jonathan Franzen and YouTube comments about the evils of saggy pants?
Ben Jonson’s Virtual Journey
On July 8th 1618, Ben Jonson set out walking from London. Over the next few months, he traveled 400 miles on foot until he reached Edinburgh on September 5th. To commemorate the epic voyage, a team of researchers is re-enacting the walk online by updating a dedicated blog, Twitter page, and Facebook profile with a series of posts corresponding to dates, locations and occurrences Jonson experienced along the way. All this sounds grand enough, but I’ll be really impressed when somebody truly re-enacts Jonson’s mock-epic poem about paddling London’s disgusting Fleet Ditch: “On The Famous Voyage.”
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