Over at Slate, Pamela Erens explores how descriptions of childbirth have disappeared from contemporary novels. Also check out Claire Cameron’s Millions interview with the author and Martha Anne Toll’s review of Erens’s new novel, Eleven Hours.
What Labor Is
A Murky Origin Story
"Their staff is always sharp, and they seem to cover politics more robustly now. But through the 1960s there were so many political trends they ignored, pretending to be focused on craft and art for art's sake." An interview with Joel Whitney about his forthcoming book Finks: How the C.I.A. Tricked the World's Best Writers, which tells the story of how the intelligence agency helped found The Paris Review. With this backstory in mind, you may read the journal's author interviews in an entirely new way.
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A Literary Thriller
Ahead of next week's publication of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, the battle over Stieg Larsson's lucrative literary estate. (Thanks, Craig)
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Reading Biblical Narrative
Philip Esler's new book Sex, Wives, and Warriors: Reading Biblical Narrative with its Ancient Audience, reintroduces our culture to some of the Bible’s most dramatic narratives.
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Mixer’s Sex, Violence, & Satire Contest Extended
Mixer Publishing wants more of your sex, violence, and satire. They've just extended their contest deadline--for fiction, poetry, and graphic stories--to the end of the month, which gives you a few more weeks to conjure and submit satirical lust and gore for a chance to win their $1,000 prize.
Raunchiness in YA
Tracy Clark-Flory has written a defense of "raunchy" teen literature for Salon.
The Land of the Setting Sun
From the Ruins of Empire author Pankaj Mishra recently visited Japan and wrote about the experience for Caravan. In particular, he was struck by the ways “much of [the country] presents a spectacle of aged modernity,” and how “it is with some shock that you recall that Japan was where once the future lay, before its bubble burst in the early 1990s, and the country, pushed inward by adversity, became a strange absence in our lives.”
Top Travel Books
Travel site WorldHum has created a top-100 travel books of all time list. The list includes many Millions favorites (Theroux, Kapuscinski, etc).
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On DJ Mad Eskimo, Tumivut, Eskimocentricity, and Tagoona
Recommended Reading: Justin Nobel’s profile of the Inuit rap scene entitled (wait for it) “Ice, Ice Baby.”
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