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
According to What’s Trending
It might sound weird, but Jon Methven McSweeney’s really wishes you would tell him how he did with your egg whites and avocado wrap.
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2014 Guggenheim Fellows Announced
The 2014 Guggenheim Fellows were announced this week, and this year’s batch of honorees (PDF) includes ten poets, seven writers of fiction, and ten writers of “general nonfiction.” Among the names on the list, Millions readers will be thrilled to see Year In Reading contributors Hari Kunzru, Julie Orringer, Meaghan O’Rourke, and Susan Orlean, as well as a number of writers who had work mentioned in other peoples’ YIR posts: Adrian Matejka, Patricia Smith, Victoria Redel, and Claire Vaye Watkins.
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Poet and Magician
One of the titans of Modernist poetry, Hilda Doolittle, or H.D. to her friends, was psychoanalyzed in the 1930s by none other than Sigmund Freud. Her letters to her friends describe the account in great detail, despite explicit instructions from Freud not to speak about their time together with anyone. This essay from The Millions on video games and Freud is a nice complementary piece.
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The Future Is Now
Back in 2013, Ted Gioia wrote a piece for The Millions about an old sci-fi novel that correctly predicted the future. Since then, he’s embarked on an ambitious project that expands on his interest in sci-fi, exploring how the most radical sci-fi writers of the sixties paved the way for much of modern fiction. As he puts it, “I focus on this era in the history of sci-fi because it laid the groundwork for one of the most important developments in current-day fiction.”
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Goodbye to Naples
Recommended Reading: Year in Reading alumna Elissa Schappell interviews Elena Ferrante about feminism, friendship, and her latest Neapolitan novel. Pair with Cora Currier’s essay on reading Italy through Ferrante’s books.
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Dear Diary
“Despite its brevity, the diary is an illuminating document that offers a glimpse into the mind of the artist as a young woman.” The never-before-seen diary of Flannery O’Connor has been published in Image, an arts and faith quarterly, and reveals the shadow of the writer she would become. See also: our own Nick Ripatrazone on teaching O’Connor.
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/