Look, we get it. You’re as sad as the rest of us that Frank Ocean’s new album didn’t actually drop on Friday. Luckily, there’s a fantastic essay over at The Atlantic which examines Ocean in the context of Harper Lee and the myth of the reclusive artist: “Channel Orange, like Mockingbird, is an unapologetic masterpiece for people defining themselves at the intersection of lived experience and possibility.”
Boys Might Cry
Owning It
“What I want to argue is that we in contemporary English and literature departments need to think instead about how to keep doing abstraction, but better—how can we ‘own’ it, as my students might say, rather than wish it away.” Jeanne-Marie Jackson writes at 3:AM Magazine about comparative literature, the public, and politics.
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Protest Con
Book Riot reports that Planned Parenthood “staged a protest of the GOP’s healthcare (or lack thereof) bill” with red-robed Handmaids. Pair with Tara Wanda Merrigan‘s review of the Hulu adaptation of Margaret Atwood‘s classic: “While transforming Offred into a stereotypically empowered representation of a woman may make the show more appealing to some viewers, I found it disheartening.”
The Signature of Style
“They say ‘kill your darlings,’ but I think darlings are your voice — your favorite parts, the parts you’d admire even if you didn’t write them. Why destroy what you love? If you feel that strongly about something you’ve written, pay attention!” Elisa Gabbert pens Electric Literature‘s “Blunt Instrument” column, which this month involves how to find one’s style as a writer. And for more scrivening advice, see our own columnists Swarm & Spark on the best way to seek feedback on your work,sending a memoir into the world, and whether writing a novel will jeopardize your mental health.
Millions Staffer Hallberg’s Big Novel, Coming Soon
Congratulations to our longtime staff writer and contributing editor Garth Risk Hallberg, whose large first novel, City on Fire, will be published by Alfred A. Knopf.
Baldwin on the Bosphorus
“He combed through the sahaflar, the second-hand bookshops that line the streets around the Grand Bazaar, their dusty wares stacked on haphazard tables. He sat by the New Mosque, drinking tea out of tulip-shaped cups, playing backgammon, and watching the fishermen’s wooden boats launch into the dirty waters of the Golden Horn.” For Public Books, Suzy Hansen writes about James Baldwin‘s less-well-documented time in Istanbul. Pair with this piece from our pages about the famed author, race, and fatherhood.
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Paradoxical Rocket-Science Shit
This review of Paul Murray’s newest novel, The Mark and the Void, praises Murray for his biting, weapons-grade one-liners and calls it “the funniest book ever written about the international banking system.” Here’s a link to our own, particularly hilarious interview with Murray.
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Lorrie Commodore
Lorrie Moore is headed to Nashville, Tennessee as Vanderbilt University’s new Gertrude Conaway Professor of English. That sound you just heard is the excited shriek of every Commodore English major yelling out in ecstasy.
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That Was How He Was
“The last line of Saul Bellow’s ‘A Single Dish’ is nothing like poetry. I can’t tell you what any single one of those words means. Imagine you’re a lexicographer and you have to define the word that, or how. And on top of this, there’s none of Bellow’s typical play with rhythm and language—it’s almost a non-sentence. And yet, when I get to it in the story, I weep.” Ethan Canin at The Atlantic on how Saul Bellow packs so much emotion into a single sentence. Here are a couple Bellow-related Millions links for your perusing pleasure.
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