“The day is spent for the most part in a glorious solitude. Like the hunter who moves silently through the woods to check his traps, she moves through the library, cautiously avoiding those whom she knows. A single conversation would ruin the beauty and vastness of her silence. Today no such conversation occurs and she is happy.” Good luck not reading this narration of a graduate student’s life in the voice of director Werner Herzog, now. Here’s a great Herzog Millions piece, as well.
Into the Abyss
Appearing Elsewhere
Fence has a new web site. And a new fall issue! My story “The Art of Forgetting” appears online, alongside new work by Ariana Reines, Mary Jo Bang, and Thomas Israel Hopkins.
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Try, Try Again
Millions contributor Jessica Francis Kane gives an account of the first time she had a story accepted into a literary magazine. Kane’s short story collection, This Close, hit shelves last March.
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Whose Hasn’t?
Sergey Stefanovich’s “The Library” takes viewers through Duncan Fallowell’s library “which has spilled over into every available space and become an art installation in its own right.”
Doubtful
“I have yet to publish a book. The reason for that is, in part, life gets in the way. There’s work and love and art and art usually comes last, (especially for we women writers). But for me, part of what weighs art down and keeps it in last place is overwhelming self-doubt.” In an essay for Electric Literature Lindsay Merbaum writes about writing, a crippling lack of confidence, and the connection between the two. Also included: that defining moment “when I first realized I was not The Shit.”
Tastemakers
Despite his popularity in Europe, the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig never hit it big in America. At Flavorwire, Jason Diamond argues that this may be about to change, thanks to an unlikely culprit: the latest Wes Anderson film.
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Infinite Stupidity
Why innovate when you can just Google and copy? Mark Pagel on the perils of “being domesticated by these great big societal things, such as Facebook and the Internet.”
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Lions, and Tigers, and Fords
Recommended Reading: This essay by Muna Mire and Messiah Rhodes on private policing in Detroit, Michigan. These few Millions essays on the Motor City will satisfy your Detroit fix.