“If only the interest he provokes were limited to his immediate surroundings, but, alas, it is not!… Still farther away, great mountains of data mining sum up, in zeroes and ones, the ultimate truth of his being.” KA Semënova updates Nabokov‘s short story “Signs and Sumbols” (and works by other famous Russian authors) for McSweeney’s, “teh internets” and the digital world.
“Signs and Symbols” For Teh Internets
It’s the reader.
In his review of Ben Marcus's The Flame Alphabet for the LARB, Lee Konstantinou suggests that we have now moved well beyond the death of the author: "In an era where everyone has a novel waiting to come out, authors are legion; it’s the reader who seems, well, dead." When we interviewed Marcus earlier this year he did not seem particularly mournful. We also reviewed the novel.
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Book Cover Contests
Venus Febriculosa, currently judging entries for its Name of the Rose book-cover design contest, has opened up another contest, this one to design a "cover" for Eugenio Montale's poem, "The Eel."
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The Gone Girl With The Dragon Tattoo On The Train
Someone's finally done it, and it's our own Emily St. John Mandel, to boot: over at FiveThirtyEight, Mandel crunches the numbers on books with the word "girl" in the title, concluding that we may not have reached peak girl yet. (Also 65% of the time, the girl in question is actually a woman.) Nonetheless, if you're looking to go rogue, check out our guide about how to title every book you ever write.
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A helping hand
This week, Melville House is donating all profits from books purchased on their website to Japan disaster relief.
“Research is about following the gleam into the dark.”
"Writing is the lonely sport of sad sacks." The Rumpus interviews Lauren Groff, who's a bit of a Millions favorite. Here's her Millions interview and here's Arcadia as Janet Potter's Staff Pick this past April. Also, here's a #LitBeat of a Literary Death Match she competed in earlier this year, in LA.
Medieval Marginalia
"Now I've written the whole thing; for Christ's sake give me a drink." Lapham's Quarterly has collected some medieval marginalia, much of which feels very modern indeed. Pair with Sam Anderson's "A Year in Marginalia."