George Dobbs explores the history of some common cliches for The Airship and makes an elegant argument for being aware of overused phrasing: “The worst fiction might never go beyond widely used tropes, but the best fiction starts with an awareness of them.” We agree, and also hope never to read “It was a dark and stormy night…” again.
Before “Once Upon A Time”
DeWitt Talks Lightning Rods
Recommended Weekend Podcast: Helen DeWitt talks with Anne Strainchamps about her novel Lightning Rods, which we at The Millions loved a lot.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Hunt; Gerrard; Molina; Osborne; Jacobson; Greer
Out this week: The Dark Dark by Samantha Hunt; The Epiphany Machine by David Burr Gerrard; Like A Fading Shadow by Antonio Muñoz Molina; Beautiful Animals by Lawrence Osborne; The Dog’s Last Walk by Howard Jacobson; and Less by Andrew Sean Greer. For more on these and other new titles, go read our just-published book preview.
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Hodgman on the Apocalypse
Humorist, author, and sometime PC representative John Hodgman is interviewed for The A.V. Club. Among the discussion points? Cormac McCarthy‘s The Road.
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Andrei Tarkovsky’s Papers Return to Russia
Following last week’s Sotheby’s auction, the archives of Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky will soon be headed back to Russia. The collection amounts to “several thousand working manuscripts, personal photographs, recordings and private documents” and it sold for a whopping £1.5 million.
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Dispatch from Mississippi
Students from the Mississippi Schools for Mathematics and Science share poems and essays about life in their home state, inspired by William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Richard Wright.
Thinking and Feeling
How to read a Victorian novel. How to read in public. How to start a Tumblr for Women.