Over at Words Without Borders, Esther Allen considers how to translate a song. As she puts it, “A song that almost everyone in a given culture at a given moment knows is a unique cultural artifact, a crystallized collective experience, a profound trigger that sets off a complex string of shared emotions.” Pair with Magdalena Edwards’s Millions essay on songs as triggers.
Said the Gramophone
On the Greatness of Talking Rabbits
A decade before Matt Groening created The Simpsons, he debuted his first comic, Life in Hell, at a record store in Los Angeles. The strip kept running for thirty-five years, even after The Simpsons brought its creator international fame. He decided to end it earlier this year, and his fans (including Alison Bechdel) are paying tribute.
●
●
Norman Mailer Slept Here
You can purchase Norman Mailer’s Provincetown home for the cool price of $3.9 million. The house was previously used for the Norman Mailer Center’s Summer Writers Colony, which Millions contributor A. Igoni Barrett attended and wrote about for Electric Literature.
Goodbye to Brazenhead
Recommended reading: Brian Patrick Eha‘s goodbye to Brazenhead Books, published in the New Yorker. Pair with J.T. Price‘s piece on the closing of Brazenhead for The Millions.
●
●
Sofia Coppola’s Little Mermaid
Sofia Coppola will direct a live adaptation of “The Little Mermaid.” No, not the Disney version, but the Hans Christian Andersen one. Expect something darker than singing crabs.
The Limits of Speed
Chuck Klosterman wonders whether or not the fastest human ever may have already been born.
●
●
Grappling with Language
“Aposiopesis: To cut short a trash-talking opponent mid-taunt by suplexing him. Can also be used in political debates.” Matt Seidel walks readers through a glossary of rhetorical wrestling terms.