“Mom would meet up with us in the museum, take us to study Impressionist or Modern art. It always made me want to puke, but we did it every weekend for over a year.” Smithsonian Magazine has a lovely piece about the story behind the children’s classic From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, including lots of anecdotes from author E.L. Konigsburg‘s kids.
Straightening Up the Files
The 2013 Bad Sex Awards
It’s not Christmas, but it’s close. It’s time for the Literary Review’s annual Bad Sex Award Shortlist to be released. This year’s finalists include My Education author Susan Choi and famous folk singer Woody Guthrie among others, and the winner(?) will be announced on December 3rd. (Bonus: Their Twitter account is sharing particularly awful excerpts as well.)
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Best Original Cave Painting
We cover a decent number of literary awards here at The Millions, but we, like most magazines, have a tendency to focus on the present. At the LARB, Andrew Nicholls makes up for this by recounting the very first book awards, in which Mooluu’s “The Beast Attacked” goes head-to-head with Kurtan the Elder’s “Why Half My Face is Missing.” You could also read our own Mark O’Connell on why we care about literary prizes to begin with.
Translators Deserve More Accolades
Daniel Hahn reminds us that translators are vastly under appreciated. To help combat this, he created the TA First Translation prize, an award that will go to a translator for a book’s English-language debut. “There are many prizes in the book world, perhaps too many. But some exist not merely to reward one individual per year, but also to make a statement about what should be valued, and what we need more of. “
A Parasite Called Media
“The media of my childhood, mostly weekly television shows and overused VHS tapes, was like a good pet. Sure, it was a little costly to keep around, but it was lovable, and I could always shut it out in the yard for a while. Now, though, media is always with me, always trying to snag my attention and siphon away as much as possible to sell to advertisers. It feels like it’s evolved from a cute little pet into a frighteningly efficient parasite.”
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“& other inconsiderate lilies”
Recommended Reading: “The Original Self-Pleasure Equation” by Susan Lewis.
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The gun goes off in the end
“Maybe this is a writer thing, having pages and pages of stuff written that has not yet cohered into a completed arc, which, when you finish it, would be a laurel on which you could rest.” A writer considers Chekhov’s dictum.
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Art Within Art Within Art Within
The Public Domain Review and Berfrois heard you’re a big fan of paintings so they rounded up paintings with other paintings inside of them.
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