It was the height of the feminist revolution and one man was trying, unsuccessfully, to publish a book about a man amidst a midlife crisis. 25 years later, Esquire editor Gordon Lish read sections of An Armful of Warm Girl in a literary magazine and demanded that Knopf reconsider publishing it (they did). This week over at Bloom, Nicki Leone dives into the work of W.M. Spackman, the man often referred to as “Fitzgerald‘s literary heir.”
The man Lish fought for
Virginia in Vogue
Look back on an article Virginia Woolf wrote for Vogue in 1924. Staff writer emeritus Emily Colette Wilkinson tackles Woolf’s difficult text, To the Lighthouse.
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sail I said sail I will Sail
In an opinion piece for the Irish Times, Julian Gough asserts that the Irish Naval Service’s decision to name two ships after famous writers is a problem because “the State hasn’t yet earned the right to be associated with Beckett and Joyce.”
Thanks, Nick
After roughly three years and an astounding 2,373 posts, Nick Moran is handing off his duties on the Curiosities blog. When we re-launched the site in 2009, we had the idea that a faster-paced mini-blog would add a lot to The Millions, giving readers fresh material to check out and give us a more “newsy” feel, but we weren’t able to really fully execute on that idea until Nick came along and took it over. First as an intern, and then later as our Social Media Editor, he created the Curiosities blog’s voice and hammered out a process that subsequent contributors have followed. He has brought a lot of readers to The Millions this way. Nick will, thankfully, be sticking around to continue to oversee our social media efforts, intern program and help with various projects and posts, including our Top Ten lists.
Coming Soon: Beautiful Ruins
Todd Field, who directed In the Bedroom and Little Children, is going to bring Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins to the big screen. The book was a big favorite among this year’s Year In Reading contributors.
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Crunching the Reading Numbers
Some cool number-crunching from Millions staff writer Patrick at the Goodreads blog. As we’ve long suspected, reading isn’t all about “new,” and the data shows a long tail of older books that are still high on people’s reading lists.
From Text to Triage
“Megan Gething jumped in to action and tied a pair of shorts around her friend’s leg to slow blood loss, using a tip she learned from the young adult science fiction novels.” A 12-year-old Massachusetts girl used what she read about creating a tourniquet from The Hunger Games to rescue her friend, reports the AP (via Book Riot). Guess the best YA books really do stick with you.
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Meet the Millions.
If you’re in NYC this coming Sunday, come out to KGB Bar and meet some Millionaires Millions staffers. Emily St. John Mandel, Michael Bourne, Garth Risk Halberg, and Sonya Chung will all be reading. Our editor in chief, C. Max Magee, and other friends and staffers will be there too, so if you’re able why not come out and put faces to names, say hi, have a drink, and help us make a little merriment.
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How Fact-Checking Works
Ever wondered how the fact-checking process works? Well wonder no longer. The Columbia Journalism Review posted an excerpt from their recently published Art of Making Magazines collection, and it explains The New Yorker’s workflow as well as the perils of “Shoot-the-Fact-Checker Syndrome.”
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I discovered Spackman by chance on a library shelf nearly 15 years ago and got obsessed for a while. Have him to thank for my intro to Henry Green too. Just last week I reread everything after Armful, and the guy still rewires my brain with his syntax. Glad to see others are finding him too.