Alexander Chee has a stunning new story in Guernica. He writes, “I wanted to eat and so I learned to sing…It took more than a witch to make a singer out of me.” Pair with Claire Cameron’s Millions interview with the author about his new novel, The Queen of the Night.
On Hunger
Recommended Reading: Jesmyn Ward
Recommended Reading: An excerpt from Jesmyn Ward's new memoir, Men We Reaped. "This is the summer of the year 2000. This is the last summer that I will spend with my brother. This is the heart. This is. Every day, this is." Pair with: The New York Times profile of Ward.
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A Side of Poetry
Fifty years ago, Frank O’Hara released Lunch Poems, a collection of remarkably informal poetry that rebuked the more academic verse of his day. As a tribute, Dwight Garner writes about the importance of the book in the Times, arguing that O’Hara's grasp of the zeitgeist is the reason he appeared on Mad Men. For more on the poet's legacy, take a look at Christopher Richards on O’Hara’s lessons for being gay.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Sahota; O’Brien; Doyle; Warren; Majmudar; Poole; Parini
New this week: The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota; The Little Red Chairs by Edna O'Brien; Chicago by Brian Doyle; The Destroyer in the Glass by Noah Warren; Dothead by Amit Majmudar; Grateful Dead's Workingman's Dead by Millions contributor Buzz Poole; and New and Collected Poems: 1975-2015 by Jay Parini. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2016 Book Preview.
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No Talking
Writing a sci-fi novel? Need some quick ideas for your fictional hellscape? Then you need Randomized Dystopia, a tool which suggests basic liberties that your imaginary dictators can suppress.
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The World Cup of Tabs
You’re probably up to your neck in World Cup coverage, but here are some gems well worth your attention no matter what: Teju Cole created a “Copa do Mundo do Brasil” playlist to set the mood; Pablo Torre’s one-sentence-long summation of Day One in São Paulo; an excerpt from Aleksandar Hemon's The Matters of Life, Death, and More: Writing on Soccer; The New Republic’s round-up of “eleven writers and intellectuals on the World Cup’s most compelling characters"; and, of course, Shaj Mathew's recent Millions review of Brazil’s Dance with the Devil.
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Louisiana: Where Music Was Born
Riffing on R&B singer Ernie K-Doe’s one-time statement, Chris Rose writes in the Oxford American, “I’m almost positive that all music, at least all American music, comes from Louisiana.” The essay appears in this year’s OA Southern Music Issue, a reliably excellent source of tunes and writing. Indeed, as Dwight Garner put it in The New York Times, the CDs that accompany each annual issue “practically belong in the Smithsonian.”