Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of Stonecutter. In the most recent issue, you’ll find our own Lydia Kiesling’s essay on cigarettes and literature; in Issue #2, you’ll find Mark O’Connell discussing Roberto Bolaño’s Between Parentheses. You read that correctly: 50% of all Stonecutter issues feature Millions staffers.
Our Stonecutters
A Lover’s Discourse
This Valentine’s Day, break out the Barthes and let critical theory decide the shape and scope of your sweet nothings.
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On Doormats and Shoes
At Page-Turner, our own Mark O’Connell notes “a thrilling obscenity” in the works of Gonçalo M. Tavares, a Portuguese writer whose recent novel, Jerusalem, depicts a character with schizophrenia. A lesser-known symptom of the illness, apparently, is a tendency to treat inanimate objects like conscious (and social) beings. (We wrote about Tavares back in March.)
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New Zadie Smith
Recommended reading: new fiction from Zadie Smith in the New Yorker, “Escape from New York.”
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Literature in Emojis
Slate has translated famous first lines of literature into emojis, and they’re surprisingly coherent. Pair with Jonathan Russell Clark‘s essay on opening sentences.
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Football Book Club: Steven Millhauser’s ‘Edwin Mullhouse’
This week, Football Book Club will be reading Pulitzer Prize winner Steven Millhauser’s Edwin Mullhouse, as well as posting essays about Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright, lamenting the awful truth about life without the NFL, and probably marveling at the insanity of L. Ron Hubbard.
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Oops Never Mind
Thriller writer James Patterson was set to publish a novel in November about an attempt on his author colleague Stephen King‘s life, subtly titled The Murder of Stephen King. Following reports of real-life threats against King, however, the book has been scuttled. After you’ve read that tale of high dudgeon, see also our editor-in-chief Lydia Kiesling’s essay, “Everything I Know About America I Learned from Stephen King.”
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