“She didn’t even want to be anything. She just wanted to be able to sit in a room and not feel tortured by it, which is sort of the human condition in general. Eileen isn’t dreaming of leaving home and making it in the big city on Broadway. She just wants to go and eat a banana, you know?” Ottessa Moshfegh on her new novel, Eileen, for The Rumpus.
Do I Dare to Eat a Banana?
Otherworldly Mission Seeks Crew and Funding
Gigantic’s going intergalactic with Gigantic Worlds, the lit journal’s first venture into book territory, in the form of a sci-fi flash fiction anthology. Authors include Jonathan Lethem, Lynne Tillman, Ed Park, Grace Krilanovich—and potentially you. Gigantic is currently seeking funding for their mission: the more money they raise, the nicer the rocket ship (or something like that).
●
●
United Slang of America
(Interactive) Infographic of the Week: Slate’s United Slang of America. Click each state to find out more about the state-specific slang. You could also read our own Michael Bourne’s piece on, like, why the word like is really cool!
One Translation To Rule Them All
“Despite a glut of English translations (well over a hundred, by my count),” writes Dante scholar Robert Pogue Harrison, “New versions of the entire [Divine Comedy] poem or individual canticles continue to appear in rapid succession—six in the last decade alone.” Over at the New York Review of Books, he investigates three of the latest: Dan Brown’s Inferno, Mary Jo Bang’s Inferno, and Clive James’s Divine Comedy.
●
●
Women’s Artistic Genius
Over at Public Books, Katie Fitzpatrick writes that Dana Spiotta’s Innocents and Others is a novel on women’s artistic genius. Pair with Jason Arthur’s review of the novel.
●
●
The VQR’s Winter Issue Is Here
If for some unspeakable reason you didn’t follow my advice when I urged you to subscribe to the VQR over a year ago, then perhaps you need more convincing. Enter: Ron Charles. He’s got a brief preview of the magazine’s Winter Issue, which hit shelves this week, and which contains an essay based on Natasha Trethewey’s Library of Congress speech.
Ontological Studies of Swedish Furniture
Most readers nurse particular fantasies of stepping into their favorite books. Whether they dream of enrolling at Hogwarts, or signing up for MI6 with James Bond, they usually have a stable of settings that function as a means of escape. So imagine how strange and conflicting it was to be Jonathan Gottschall, the English professor who got a chance to enter Fight Club.
●
●
James Franco + n+1
It’s time for another literary James Franco sighting. This time he’s popping up in the table of contents for the next issue of n+1.
●
●