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
On the Spectrum
What color would The Little Prince be? Before you dismiss this as an inane question, artist Jaz Parkinson created color signatures based on how often books mentioned certain hues. The results look like a better Rothko painting. Pair with: Radiolab’s fascinating podcast on the science of color.
“The Soul of the Censor”
Recommended reading: Robert Darnton writes for The New York Review of Books blog about the history and politics of censorship.
Tot Tales
Have you ever wondered how memoirists remember their childhoods so well when we can barely remember what we ate for breakfast this morning? Although losing your earliest memories is a common phenomenon called childhood amnesia, we’re more likely to remember childhood if we fashion it into a story.
George Carlin, tireless student of language
The Atlantic on George Carlin’s seven dirty words as they turn 40 years old. You can watch a 1978 performance on YouTube, if you’ve never heard the routine. Maybe put the headphones on, though, as the language is, as you might expect, deliciously filthy, so yeah, NSFW.
3 comments:
Add Your Comment: Cancel reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Poison in the Plot
Agatha Christie could actually kill you. She studied pharmacology and learned how to create poisons, which led to her use of poisons in her novels. You could also read Daniel Friedman’s essay on solving the mystery of how to close a crime novel.
●
●
“The dead don’t care about much”
Philip Connors‘ essay about his brother, published in Lapham’s Quarterly, is truly heartbreaking.
●
●
Pythonated
We’ve published a fair number of pieces about the import of book covers. You may have read one of our US-UK book cover battles. Over at The Awl, Amanda Pickering takes a look at one of the stranger aspects of book design: the animals that appear on the covers of programming books.
●
●
R.O.U.S.
Meet the Bosavi woolly rat, a new breed of giant rat recently discovered in the forests of Papua New Guinea. Weighing in at over three pounds and measuring more than three feet long, it’s thought to be the largest known species of rat on the planet.
●
●
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/