Two years ago, Allison Parrish produced a diary of an expedition through “fantastical places that do not exist.” The twist? The diary was generated by a computer program, which extracted more than 5,700 sentences drawn from Project Gutenberg and later recombined at random by “switching out grammatical constituents.” An extract of the finished work, interspersed with Parrish’s nonfiction essay, can be read here.
Allison Parrish’s Generated Novel
Appearing Elsewhere
My review of Tom Bissell‘s Magic Hours appears in this Sunday’s NYTBR.
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Looking for Cleopatra
Recommended Reading: This love letter to Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, “the only woman in the world.” Here’s a bonus infographic that compares Cleopatra to everyone’s favorite Khaleesi, Daenerys Targaryen.
“The heat of autumn / is different from the heat of summer.”
With the help of Flora Coker, the Poetry Foundation created an animated reading of Jane Hirshfield’s “The Heat of Autumn.”
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An Anonymous Evangelical Poetry Fan
In what might be the first sighting of its kind, an anonymous evangelical poetry fan has made an appearance in the comments of Elizabeth Lucy Conway’s recent essay on teaching poetry.
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Vote for The Millions at 3 Quarks Daily
Hey look, several pieces of ours are in the running to win 3 Quarks Daily Arts and Literature Prizes! On their voting page, you can cast your ballot for James McWilliams’s piece on Faulkner, our own Hannah Gersen’s appreciation of Friday Night Lights, or our own Nick Ripatrazone’s essay on teaching English, among other nominees.
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