“Most of the time I think of the self as a snare, and I don’t like being trapped in it. I try to reach out beyond my pittance of experience and connect to the world, but it turns out one way to do that is to be honest and accurate about my own life.” Leslie Jamison interviews Charles D’Ambrosio for The New Yorker. Pair with our own Hannah Gersen‘s review of D’Ambrosio’s Loitering.
“Instead of Sobbing, You Write Sentences”
The Starting Place
“I wanted to be able to approach the subject from many different angles, not just the one most people think of when they think of war: an infantryman with a rifle killing the enemy. What does one make of one’s moral responsibility for killing when you’re part of a crew-fired-weapon whose rounds strike miles away, when you’re not even sure if you have killed people or how many? What about when you’re a chaplain trying to influence policy, or a psychological operations soldier trying to help shape the battlefield?” Phil Klay, author of the National Book Award-winning collection Redeployment, on modes of storytelling and on the psychological difference between citizens and veterans.
●
●
Real Life Rosebud
Last month, we got the gossip from Orson Welles. This month, the dirt is about him. His first film, Too Much Johnson, was recently rediscovered in Italy.
●
●
The United States of Poetry
Poetry readership among U.S. adults is the highest it’s been in 15 years—with young adult readership (among 18-24 year olds) nearly doubling—according to the National Endowment for the Arts’ 2017 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA). (For what it’s worth: The Millions has always loved poetry).
Founding Father, Remixed
George Washington as you’ve never seen him before: First, a cartoon entitled “Cox and Combs” and second, a live action avant garde take on the founding father.
Colson Whitehead’s Two Types of Books
“There’s only two kinds of books, shit you like, and shit you don’t like," Colson Whitehead told the crowd in his lively AWP Keynote.
●
●
●