In honor of Lolita’s 60th anniversary, Alexandra Kleeman, Josephine Livingstone, Anna Wiener, and seven other writers reread Nabokov’s magnum opus. Pair with this Millions essay about designing the book cover.
The Young Girl Grows Old
Needs More Filigree
Kate Heart has put together an array of charts breaking down the covers of 2011's Young Adult fiction. Spoiler: the average book featured filigree and a white girl whose head is "mostly/ completely missing."
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I Know That Naked Man
Recommended Reading: The untold story of a legendary photograph by Diane Arbus, A naked man being a woman, over at The Literary Hub.
Become Louder, Even Still
Recommended Reading: Apogee Journal has collected fourteen responses from writers to sexual violence perpetrated in the literary community.
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You ninnie-hammer flycatcher!
Short on insult fodder? In that case you’ll want to read Colin Burrow’s review of Melissa Mohr’s Holy Shit: A Brief History of Swearing. It includes such notables as: “slapsauce fellows, slabberdegullion druggels, lubbardly lowts … slutch calf-lollies, grouthead gnat-snappers, lob-dotterels, gaping changelings, [and] codshead loobies.” In the end, “swearing is one of the most basic human acts,” he writes.
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I Heart Antosha Chekhonte
This summer Antosha Chekhonte's (aka Anton Chekhov's) first book The Prank will finally be published after more than 130 years of waiting, and it's been described as "frankly indispensable for readers of Chekhov, or Russian literature, or comedic literature, or parody, or any and all literature" generally. Pair with our own Sonya Chung's essay, "I Heart Chekhov."
Better Book Titles
Did you think the title of the most recent book you read could've been improved if it had been a bit more straightforward? Then Better Book Titles is for you. Among their more inspired retitlings: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Gay Jewish Magicians Kill Nazis), Blink (Everyone is Racist), and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (The First Book I've Read in Six Years).
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“You are saying you do not exist in the American dream except as a nightmare.”
Make some time this weekend to read James Baldwin and Audre Lorde in conversation, which originally appeared in a 1984 issue of Essence, but has since been reposted by the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts.
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