“Sometimes you come across sentences that are like cairns, evidence the trail continues, and you are so grateful to have found them.” For the Tin House blog Jacob Rubin considers one such sentence from Charles D’Ambrosio‘s Loitering, which our own Hannah Gersen reviewed for the Millions.
A Single Sentence
“Happiness was born a twin.”
Robert and Richard Kalich are identical twins, and their family had the misfortune of having them both grow up to be writers.
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Mad Money
Modern day celebrities aren't the only victims of Photoshop. Paula Byrne, a Jane Austen biographer, believes that Austen has been "airbrushed" on her £10 Bank of England note. The portrait makes her look like "a pretty doll with big doe eyes" and diminishes her reputation as an author, Byrne argues.
Kafka in Myanmar
"On my manhood rests a tattooed / portrait of Mr. President. / My beloved found that out after we wed. / She was utterly gutted, / Inconsolable." Poet Maung Saungkha may have to prove in a Myanmar courtroom that he doesn't have a tattoo of the nation's president on his genitals.
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Life in the Company of Writers
Arisa Wright hits the nail on the head in this piece for LitHub, titled simply "In Praise of Our Black Women Poets": "Clifton’s remark disabused me of the idea that there is something I must erase to make my poetry universal. She freed my mind and body; she freed my verse."
Gatsby As He Was; Gatsby As He Will Be
The hype keeps building for Baz Luhrmann’s oft-delayed Great Gatsby adaptation. The first trailer had the whole internet up in a tizzy, and now the latest teaser from Beyoncé and Andre 3000’s “Back to Black” cover has even more people interested. Perhaps, in order to wind down, we should all check out the first cinematic reworking of Fitzgerald’s classic. Over at Open Culture, fans can get a look at The Only Known Footage of the 1926 Film Adaptation of The Great Gatsby (Which F. Scott Fitzgerald Hated).
Flatmancrooked Reading in Brooklyn
Attention New York-based readers: This Friday evening at 7:00, The Millions staff writer Edan Lepucki will read from her novella If You're Not Yet Like Me at Book Court bookstore in Brooklyn. Joining her will be fellow Flatmancrooked author Shya Scanlon, who will read from his novel, Forecast. Don't miss it!
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