“It was only in 1987, when she went to National Taiwan University, that the censorship laws were relaxed. Yet the censorship laws seemed to have an opposing effect on her literary ambitions. ” Meet Qiu Miaojin, the first woman in Chinese literature to come out as openly gay. Ankita Chakraborty at Longreads has more on this remarkable writer.
Crocodiles and Chinese Queer Classics
The Swamp of the Non-Reader
Jonathan Gourlay used to read all the time, then one day he stopped. “I knew that I had taken up residence in the swamp of the non-reader. Here is what life is like in that swamp.”
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On McElroy’s Cannonball
John Domini reviews Joseph McElroy’s Cannonball in the pages of Bookforum. In our Great Second-Half 2013 Book Preview, our own Garth Risk Hallberg wrote that, “this, his first novel in many a moon, concerns the Iraq War, among other things, and it’s hard to think of an author more suited to reimagining the subject.”
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A Confession
Cat Marnell and Alana Massey both have new books out, and they are, in their own ways, variants on the genre of “confessional” writing. In an essay for Slate, Katy Waldman unpacks their essential appeal and their arguments, describing how each goes about the task of reinventing the concept of the memoir. You could also read our interview with Massey.
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Must be all that Schadenfreude
Eating your manuscript, deliberately slicing open your own head during a reading, titling your work “Baby Fucker.” These stunts are par for the course during the competition for the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, a prestigious German literary award.
What Soderbergh is Reading
Remember back in 2011 when Steven Soderbergh made that list (PDF) of every movie, TV show, book, play and short story he had watched that year? Well according to his recent interview with New York Magazine, the book he most recently finished is Paul Murray’s Skippy Dies. (And what a coincidence! The book Murray most recently blurbed is Epic Fail, our first Millions Original.)
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Thoroughly Modern Dilemmas
How many writers actually know how a word processor functions? Chances are the answer is: not many. At Page-Turner, our own Mark O’Connell examines this odd state of affairs, which he became more cognizant of after reading Vikram Chandra’s new book, Geek Sublime.
I Found One Job in Your Area
“Siri, I need something.” Beep. “What can I help you with?” “Siri, I want to fix you. I want to rewrite your dialogue.” Beep beep. “I can help you with that.”
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