Over at Electric Literature, Megha Majumdar writes about the changing architecture in Kolkata, the quest for authenticity, and nostalgia. Pair with Olena Jennings’s Millions essay on nostalgia for a life never lived.
Dispatch from Kolkata
Brow Raised
Not highbrow, not lowbrow, not even middlebrow - is American culture now dominated by the upper middle brow?
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Mussolini and Mario and the Magicians
Thomas Mann’s parable "Mario and the Magicians" was inspired by Mussolini, but its content is also applicable to a certain political candidate we all know and are trying to make sense of. Pair with our piece on Trump: The Novel.
Ask Us Anything: Swarm & Spark
Swarm and Spark, a new column at The Millions, invites you to write with your questions about publishing, the literary life, or writing. The column is written by two anonymous figures: a NYC editor with years in the industry and an MFA professor at a long-established program. Ask anything that has plagued, confounded, pleased or troubled you about your life in and around literature and you may be answered, always with respect: your question will be treated as anonymous as well. Send your true confessions, complaints and queries to [email protected].
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The Via Crucis of the Book
“All of a sudden, things that should be banal, like a person’s face—the fact that a person has a face—becomes extremely disorienting. In these moments, I think it’s important to keep those strange commas.” In an illuminating interview for Asymptote, Year in Reading alumna Katrina Dodson talks about the thrills and challenges in translating The Complete Stories of Clarice Lispector. Pair with Magdalena Edwards’s Millions review of the collection.
Short Form
"Aphorisms are linguistic memes. They were, in essence, an attempt by Greek philosophers to go viral 2,500 years before the internet existed." On the form of the aphorism, and Sarah Manguso's new book.
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