If at some point in your life you lose a beloved pet, and if, while mourning, you decide to write an obituary, know this — whatever you write will not be as good as E.B. White’s tribute to his dog. (You can read more pieces like it in the perfectly-titled E.B. White on Dogs.)
RIP Daisy
Comparing a Fajita to a Summer’s Day
I’ve written before about the excellently titled series Novelists in Restaurants Eating Food. It lets some of our foremost literary minds reflect on places like Fallon and Byrne and Buffalo Wild Wings. Now, Millions contributor Laura van den Berg writes about Cafe Azteca in Lawrence, MA, where they make shrimp fajitas that inspire mouth-watering daydreams. Sample quote: “Love of food can be love’s most sincere form—especially when avocados are involved.”
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We Can’t Make This Up
If you thought Cameron Diaz’s windshield sex scene in The Counselor was weird, things just got weirder for Cormac McCarthy. His ex-wife was arrested for pulling a gun out of her vagina after a domestic dispute about aliens escalated. Pair with: Our essay on McCarthy’s foray into screenwriting.
The Library of the Future
If you’re looking forward to the next Margaret Atwood novel, you’ll have to wait a century. Atwood is the first author to participate in the Future Library project, in which 100 authors will write 100 original manuscripts to be published 100 years from now. We’re envious of our grandchildren. If you’d like an Atwood fix sooner, her short story collection Stone Mattress: Nine Tales comes out next week.
“My name is Geoff Dyer and I endorse this.”
Geoff Dyer endorses Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station , John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead –our own Bill Morris loves it too!–and a generalized aversion toward seafood in his interview with Morten Høi Jensen for Book Forum. While they ostensibly met to talk about Zona–reviewed on The Millions here–it’s perhaps unsurprising that they managed to digress so liberally: “we chatted about his review of Richard Bradford’s Martin Amis: the Biography, and by the end he was giving me advice about which David Markson book I should read first. Our interview, in other words, assumed the shape of a Geoff Dyer book.”
Mieko Kawakami on the Finality of Being Born
David McNeill profiles author Mieko Kawakami, whose recently translated novel, Breasts and Eggs, has shaken the world of Japanese literature.
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Rumaan Alam on Genre Snobbery
Rumaan Alam discusses his suspenseful new book, Leave the World Behind, and the efficiency of genre writing.
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