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
Art of Seduction
Last week, Erin Fortenberry reviewed Walter Kirn’s Blood Will Out for The Millions, writing that the events in the book were partly centered on Kirn himself. Now, in the Times, Janet Maslin reads the book, which struck her as “primarily a tale of seduction.”
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New Murakami in 2014
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Adventures in Surrealism
Three decades after his death, the work of Romanian writer Max Blecher remains largely unavailable in English. Ricky D’Ambrose writes for The Nation about Blecher’s work. As he puts it, “Max Blecher is an obsessive saboteur of the breach between two seemingly irreconcilable positions: revulsion and lust.”
We Need More Prizes. We Need Better Prizes.
Following the launch of a new £10,000 “innovative” literary prize by Goldsmiths College and the New Statesman, Chad Post takes a look at the current state of American literary awards. His opinion? “America is The Worst for trying to equate popularity with quality.”
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The Two Percent
What would happen if two percent of the world’s population disappeared overnight? HBO’s new teaser for its adaptation of Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers asks us to contemplate that question. From what we see so far, it looks terrifying. The series premieres on June 15.
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I’m a Very Sexy Baby
Last night I went to listen to Chris Kraus, Tamara Faith Berger, and Sheila Heti read the dirty parts of their books. Then I wrote a #LitBeat about it. For a little extra context, you might like to also read this article, written by Elizabeth Gumport for n+1, on Kraus’s writing and publishing career.