Over at The Paris Review, Wei Tchou travels to Flannery O’Connor’s farm in Georgia. As she writes, “The charm of Andalusia lies in gestures like this, the ones that urge you into feeling as though you belong. The place isn’t a fossil, it’s a home.” Pair with Nick Rapatrazone’s Millions essay on teaching and learning from “the greatest American writer ever to load up a typewriter.”
Flannery’s Home
Law and Order: Library Edition
“We don’t want to run a for-profit business, or even a break-even business that’s based on income. It’s something that would not return a great deal of money for us and would create an adversarial role.” The Huffington Post reports on the growing number of libraries dropping overdue fines. Pair with Daniel Penev on why public libraries have a more vital role to play in the culture than ever before.
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Appearing Elsewhere
You should totally go to Edan’s reading tonight. But if Brooklyn is inconvenient for you while Manhattan is somehow more manageable, Millions founder and editor Max will be appearing with several other editors at the National Book Critics Circle panel “How to Publish Book Reviews & Features” at The New School at 6:30pm.
Nicholson Baker Overload
In addition to House of Holes‘ recent coverage in the New York Review of Books and Open Letters Monthly (and on The Millions), the latest edition of The Paris Review features an interview with “mad scientist of smut” Nicholson Baker. (You can check out an excerpt here.) But for those still unsatisfied, Adam Wilson has assembled a canon of raunchy literature.
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Who Wrote the First Mystery Novel?
“Never mind whether the butler did it. Here’s a real mystery for you: Who wrote the first detective novel?” Paul Collins at the New York Times takes another look at the usual suspects.
Reconstruction
Recommended Reading: On lyric essays and trauma at Ploughshares. “I didn’t start writing lyric essays until I found out I had cancer. The melanoma buried in my right cheek was at first missed, and then misdiagnosed in its severity. Clark’s stage IV, they told me. Likely in my lymph nodes, but they wouldn’t know until my third surgery, the excision and biopsy.”