“To some degree, as I move outside of the exclusive genre audience, the exclusive genre issues don’t bother me as much.” The Atlantic talks with N.K. Jemisin, the first black writer to win speculative fiction’s Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Fifth Season. We wrote about Jemisin’s work when she was nominated for the Hugos a few years back.
Making History at the Hugos
Tuesday New Release Day: Mandel, Caro, Freudenberger, Fountain, Bechdel, Coll
Our own Emily St. John Mandel’s new novel The Lola Quartet is out today. New Yorkers can see her (and some other Millions staffers) read on Sunday. Also out are Robert Caro’s latest installment of his LBJ biography, Nell Freudenberger’s The Newlyweds, Billy Lynn’s Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain, Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel, and Steve Coll’s oil industry exposé Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power.
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Either/Or
“An artist you love occupies a weird in-between place, where they’re somehow a little more than a father, but a little less than a neighbour. They can permanently re-organize your consciousness but they can’t sell you a Coke. You feel you know them more than anyone you actually know, which means that you don’t really know a damn thing. I feel I know Elliott Smith, but if I picture him in front of me, I find myself picturing a tiny figurine, or Mount Rushmore.” Sasha Chapin has written an intensely personal essay about Elliott Smith for Hazlitt. Here is The Millions’ own Torch Ballads & Jukebox Music column to satisfy any lingering musical urges.
I’m Not Excited
The “Albums of Our Lives” series over at The Rumpus is a consistent source of entertaining essays. This week’s contribution, which focuses on Vampire Weekend’s Modern Vampires of the City, is no aberration.
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Letters to Gandhi
Maria Popova shares Tolstoy’s forgotten letters to Gandhi, later published as A Letter to Hindu. “Love is the only way to rescue humanity from all ills.”
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Brief Likenesses
“Armand’s characters all seem both hugely present and in life’s juice and simultaneously dead, as if rent of brain, nerves, chest, stomach, intestines … Without gods and devils these patients feel that only fire can save them, existing eternally unless burned away.” Australian novelist Louis Armand’s newest, Abacus, is reviewed by Richard Marshall at 3:AM Magazine.
“The worlds of rock and lit appear to be merging”
What do indie rock musicians share in common with experimental writers? A great deal, and not just a distaste for both of those over-used adjectives.
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Verse Play
“A must-read for: anyone who has grappled with mood disorders/And: anyone interested in the nature of creativity/And: anyone interested in insightful stories told with honesty, pathos, and wit.” On Ellen Forney’s Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michaelangelo & Me.