It’s a common saying among actors that the script does most of the work. Which raises an interesting question: is it possible for a great writer to make art out of a bad story? At The Kenyon Review’s blog, Amit Majmudar says it is, using Shakespeare as proof. Related: five experts on the Bard’s greatest plays.
The Contrived
Catch ‘Em All
"I can locate the remnants of two or three abandoned cars that haven’t moved in a year, a couple of defunct pay phones, several tire piles, and at least one trashed couch that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere." Rob Walker on playing Pokémon Go in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Eggers; Moore; Solomon; Wheeler; de Waal; Gersen
Out this week: Heroes of the Frontier by Dave Eggers; The Unseen World by Liz Moore; Leaving Lucy Pear by Anna Solomon; Bad Faith by Theodore Wheeler; My Name Is Leon by Kit de Waal; and Home Field by our own Hannah Gersen (who we interviewed). For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-Half 2016 Book Preview.
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Top 20 Short Stories of 2010
Chris Flynn of Australian Book Review runs down the top 20 short stories of 2010 (many of them American) at his blog, Fly the Falcon.
Take Two
Last week, to mark the release of The First Bad Man, we interviewed Miranda July here at The Millions. In Bookforum, you can read another interview with July, who talks about striving to mimic the feeling of “purposely unfinished work.”
Text Turns to Artwork
Tom McCormack is midway through a three-part series on internet artwork, but not the kind involving Photoshop and GIFs. After exploring the history and usage of emoticons in part one of his series, McCormack traces the roots of ASCII artwork back to Guillaume Apollinaire’s 1918 book Calligrammes. Stay tuned for the conclusion soon: a look at the history of emoji.