Want to be a female travel writer? That’s great, says Jessa Crispin, just please don’t be Elizabeth Gilbert.
Don’t Be Her
Unferth on Lerner
The always fantastic Deb Olin Unferth reviews Ben Lerner‘s Leaving the Atocha Station.
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People were not invited–they went there.
The mansion that inspired The Great Gatsby‘s West Egg has been privately sold, after sitting on the market for two years.
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Breaking Newton’s Heart
“Insanity, madness, obsession, math, objectivity, truth, science and art. These friends always impress me. They’re sculptors and tailors, not scientists or spies. I’ve chosen them with the peculiar attentiveness of a shell collector stupidly combining the overwhelming multitude of broken detritus to hold up one shell so beautiful that it finds its way into my pocket, lining my clothes with sand. And then another. Not too many, so that the sheer number could never diminish the value of one.” On madness and genius with cosmologist Janna Levin.
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“Female Essayists Seize the Day”
Though major publications like The New York Times are still questioning the importance and power of female essayists, Lucy Scholes argues that women are producing “some of the best writing today” and as proof lists several of the best recent essay collections by women in a piece for The Daily Beast. Incidentally, that list includes titles such as The Empathy Exams and The Opposite of Loneliness, both of which were reviewed for The Millions (here and here, respectively).
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Books Speak to Our Times
Sam Tanenhaus asks, What do this season’s political books tell us about the election? As he puts it, “Election-year analyses always seem to arrive too late or too soon. They are useful nonetheless. The mistakes and misapprehensions — what the authors thought they knew — mirror the broader thinking of their moment.” Pair with this Millions essay on politics and excessive language.
The Atheist Had It Coming
Has something dreadful happened at the bus stop? Are you running late for the revival? These are a few of the many ways to tell whether or not you’re actually living inside of a short story by Flannery O’Connor.
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