New this week: Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie; The Visiting Privilege by Joy Williams; The Lost Landscape by Joyce Carol Oates; This is Your Life, Harriet Chance! by Jonathan Evison; Cries for Help, Various by Padgett Powell; and Above the Waterfall by Ron Rash. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great Second-Half 2015 Book Preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Rushdie; Williams; Oates; Evison; Powell; Rash
Not All Commencement Addresses Are Equal
Graduation season is upon us, and college students across the nation are listening to esteemed commencement speakers. Some get treated to the likes of Bill Watterson, Jon Stewart, or Barbara Kingsolver. (I got to listen to The Rock.) In the thrill of the moment, it feels like it hardly matters who’s at the podium. One wonders if audiences really grasp the material in these speeches right away, or if the speaker’s words only become clear later on. Inspired by David Foster Wallace’s iconic Kenyon address in 2005, our own Kevin Hartnett tried to find out.
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This is a nice surprise.
The latest installment of #LitBeat is up! Jerry Stahl, Tom Bissell, Krys Lee, and (Millions staff picked) Lauren Groff went head-to-head for the glory of being crowned the victor last Friday in a very special made-for-TV version of Literary Death Match in L.A.
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Wiesel in Disney
Something to brighten your day — Elie Wiesel visited Disneyland and absolutely loved it.
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Hart Crane: Remix Artist
“Samuel Greenberg belongs in the pantheon of literary manqués,” writes Jacob Silverman. The poet was a favorite of Hart Crane, who described him as “a Rimbaud in embryo.” But did Crane take his adoration too far? Did he in fact “remix,” re-purpose, or plagiarize some of Greenberg’s work?
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An Issue of Perspective
Sure, male journalists are generally not the best when it comes to writing about women, but things have gotten better in the last few years, right? Maybe not.
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Living like Fitzgerald
“Recent research has shown that messy, dark, noisy, booze-filled environments like the one Fitzgerald cultivated at La Paix can, in fact, help stimulate creativity.” The Atlantic reports on the importance of environment for creativite work and / or gives you an excuse to live like Fitzgerald.
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