Rachel Klein writes on raising a genderqueer, non-binary child. “Being a parent means, at some point, being able to look on as your child writes their own story, a story in which you play a role but which is ultimately not about you.”
Breaking the Binary
The Worst Dinner Party
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Jesse Eisenberg’s Brain
Recommended Reading: Jesse Eisenberg’s stream of conscious New Yorker short story, “A Short Story Written With Thought-to-Text Technology.” “When he was younger he used to stay late after school on Fridays and come in early on Mondays, a pattern his mother referred to with equal parts admiration and disdain as ‘studying overtime.’ Jesus, I’ve written another loser.”
Reading a Video Game
The modern maestros of fantasy at Bethesda Softworks penned thousands of pages of text for the Elder Scrolls series, scattering 256 detail-packed, in-game books across 2006’s Oblivion, with a commensurate amount in 2002’s Morrowind. Presumably these tomes were consumed by the hardcore few. Did Bethesda spend countless hours of careful word-crafting for a fanatical minority?
You’ve Probably Never Heard of Him
Is Mark SaFranko the greatest American writer you’ve never heard of? We don’t know, but 3:AM Magazine makes a strong case in this interview with the author who they call an heir to Charles Bukowski and John Fante. Now you’ve heard of him, at least.
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Nobel Speculation
With the Nobel Prize for Literature to be awarded on October 7th, speculation is heating up at the Literary Saloon as to who might be this year’s main contenders.
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Shakar’s Story Continues
The Observer picks up Luminarium author Alex Shakar’s narrative where his piece here at The Millions left off. (via @sarahw)
The New Fiction of Solitude
“If we are now relentlessly connected, every marginal identity gaining collective recognition, becoming assimilated, ever more rapidly? If that is where we stand, then something like a stubbornly solitary voice may be welcome, even necessary, telling us that what it means to be human—and what may keep us human—is to feel alone in a strange room, with our seclusion the thing that defines and can save us.” On bearing witness to the spectacle of aloneness and the fiction of empathy.
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Now on Kindle
Three days after Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the Times wrote about Katharine Weymouth taking over the Washington Post, Jeff Farhi reports that Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has agreed to purchase the newspaper. Will Bezos follow up his purchase of English™ with a brand-new WaPo style guide?
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