“I have always had faith that the best writers will rise to the top, like cream, sooner or later, and will become exactly as well known as they should be—their work talked about, quoted, taught, performed, filmed, set to music, anthologized. Perhaps, with the present collection, Lucia Berlin will begin to gain the attention she deserves.” An excerpt from Lydia Davis‘s foreword to Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories is now online.
Like Cream
Clever Girl(s)
If you’re struggling to find a book deal, you might want to skip this story because it’ll be so demoralizing: a group of women are making a ton of money by publishing “dinosaur erotica” with titles such as Taken by the T-Rex, Ravished by the Triceratops, and Taken by the Pterodactyl. (Pretty lame, if you ask me, that that last title isn't spelled “Ptaken…”)
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Byron-ness
Which Lord Byron is the most Byron-y? Let Mallory Ortberg tell you in her rankings of Byron portraits.
Great Expectations
John Keene, Ken Chen, and seven other writers share their most anticipated books coming out this spring. Also check out The Millions great book preview.
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“Carefully Arranged Derangement”
"Literature offers a way of framing, or reckoning with, the chaos of a universe we can never truly know." The LA Times interviewed Denis Johnson about his new novel The Laughing Monsters, an excerpt of which can be read online here.
Ruin-Reading
Junot Díaz is at home discussing his native Hispaniola as he muses on the function of apocalypse - New Orleans, Haiti, and Japan - in our global media landscape.
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The Best Single Issue of Any Literary Magazine, Ever
What is the best single issue of any literary magazine? Luna Park nominates Granta 8: Dirty Realism, and explains why.
Jonathan Dee’s Privileges
The Rumpus follows suit and interviews Jonathan Dee, the author of a novel, The Privileges, for which he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.