Newsweek Senior Writer (and Millions contributor) Alexander Nazaryan has a new interview with William T. Vollmann up on Newsweek’s website. To start things off right, he reports that if Vollman were to win the Nobel Prize, he’d enjoy giving a decent chunk of the prize money to prostitutes.
America Central
The Historian, His Wife, Her Venom, His Rivals
At The Guardian, the intriguing case of historian Orlando Figes and his wife’s savage Amazon reviews of her husband’s rivals’ books. The case begs the question: should Amazon allow anonymous reviews?
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A Convergence of Cowboys
For the Los Angeles Review of Books, Sean McCoy reports on the 35th National Cowboy Poetry Gathering and tells you everything you didn't know about the history and aesthetics of cowboy poetry.
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Competence without comprehension
If you read one piece on early computer scientist Alan Turing that’s come out in celebration of his 100th birthday last Saturday (if you were wondering about Friday’s Google Doodle) you might do very well to make it this one in the Atlantic on how his reading of Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution influenced his work and continues to shape the way we work with computers. It’s also about the limits of artificial intelligence.
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Remembering Seamus Heaney
On Monday, November 4th, Paul Muldoon, Colum McCann, Loretta Brennan Glucksman, and Jean Kennedy Smith will pay tribute to the recently deceased poet with a free, Off-Broadway production entitled Remembering Seamus: A Celebration of the Life and Work of Seamus Heaney.
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Angie Cruz’s Working Women
Angie Cruz started an Instagram account called Dominicanas NYC to collect photos of 1960s Dominican working-class women while researching her novel Dominicana.
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Rejection Romanticized
Recommended Reading: Kavita Das on why writers shouldn’t romanticize rejection. “Not only is it harder for writers of color to get published, but when rejecting our work, publishers tell us that what we’re writing about is too narrow and niche and won’t appeal to mainstream audiences.” Our own Bill Morris writes about the sorry state of rejection letters and literary magazine editors take your questions about them.
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Awesome. Think of all the Thai girls he can buy from their dads if he wins! [see reference by Alexander Nazaryan in interview cited above]
But hey, even if he doesn’t win, there’s always lighting out to Kyrgyzstan and doing a bridal “hit and run.” You don’t even need cash for that. Maybe just a club. And some Tide for the bloody sheets. (See sidebar “top article” reference next to interview cited above, and related tweets)
Just one more item re interview and his included pix.
Re Vollman’s drag excursions as “sad old lady Dolores.”
Quote: “So much of the destruction on Earth has been wrought by men. Women are the ones who give life and try to pick up the pieces…. What a great gender they are.”
As Self-Designated Representative of all sad old ladies, I would like to just say, “Thank you, Bill.” (I find my new steam Swiffer very helpful in this work.)
Actually, he/she still looks pretty f*ckable to me, mid- to late 50’s and strangely hot… in a late-Nico kinda way.
Moe Murph
Surprisely Happy “Old Lady”
Washington DC
“I almost never sleep with American prostitutes any more, unless they really want me to – if they are going to get hurt if I don’t.”
The Paris Review – The Art of Fiction No. 163, William T. Vollmann (Fall 2000)
The jokes just write themselves
http://the-toast.net/2013/11/04/male-novelist-jokes/