Recommended Reading: Tony Kushner’s recent speech at the Whiting Writers’ Awards.
Failing Upwards
Beautiful Again, and Interesting, and Modern
Have we entered into the age of New Modernism? Better yet, what does “New Modernism” even mean? Let regular Millions contributor Jonathan Russell Clark explain it to you in his essay for LitHub on George Saunders, Alexandra Kleeman, and experimental feeling. This Millions review of Gabriel Josipovici’s What Ever Happened to Modernism? is particularly relevant.
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Ray Bradbury Passes Away
Ray Bradbury, author of such classics as Fahrenheit 451, has passed away at the age of 91, reports io9. I’ll always remember the first time I read The Veldt (PDF), and being scared out of my adolescent mind.
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Shelf Life
“‘You can tell how serious people are by looking at their books,’ Susan Sontag told Sigrid Nunez.” The meaning of book shelves.
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But Who Hates On The Haters?
Jonathan Franzen’s Kraus Project should be “a match made in heaven,” writes Jacob Mikanowski, because of how it pairs together “the old hater [Karl Kraus] and the new [Franzen], the Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid of cultural criticism drawn together across the gulf of a century to take on all comers.” Alas, the end result is instead a “strange and rather discordant experience, like receiving a deep tissue massage while being spat on from a great height.” (Bonus: One of the best London Review of Books openers of all time.)
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A to the Future
We take it for granted that our language will grow and change. But one thing we think less often about is that our alphabet is subject to the same forces. Herewith, Carlos Lozada reads Michael Rosen’s new book Alphabetical, which delves into the origins and future prospects of our writing system.
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The Road on Which You Are Traveling Is a Very Bad Road
New York Times travel editor Monica Drake recounts visiting Antigua after reading Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place—a sharp critique of tourism and the colonialist narrative around the island. As she puts it, “For all the drama of its history, […] the beauty of the place, the very thing that bewitches its tourists, renders it a time capsule to its residents.”
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The Vulture Circles
New York magazine’s Vulture Reading Room series, featuring Sam Anderson and others, dares to take on Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. The verdict? Brown’s stylistic overreach is still good comic fodder for discerning readers.
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Lyrical Gifts
John Darnielle, who you may know through his work with The Mountain Goats, released a new novel last week, titled Wolf in White Van. Over at The Hairpin, our onetime #LitBeat editor Emily M. Keeler reviews the book, which she calls “a novel that unspools rather than reads.” Pair with: Jesse Jarnow on the 33 ⅓ book series, which includes a volume written by Darnielle.
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