Articles by Mark O'Connell
February 25, 2013
Literature as Self-Defense: An Interview with James Lasdun 2
In 2003, Lasdun taught a course in creative writing at a college in New York. His most gifted student was an Iranian-born woman in her early 30s. They emailed back and forth, and an online friendship began to develop. The book is an exploration of the effects of this relationship turning sour. Give Me Everything You Have is a harrowing account of what it’s like to have someone expend a great deal of time and energy on the project of damaging your life for no immediately obvious reason.
January 22, 2013
Introducing The Millions Originals and An Excerpt of Our First eBook, ‘Epic Fail’ 7
To kick off our new series, Dublin-based staff writer Mark O’Connell has penned an exploration of the internet-era obsession with terrible art – bad YouTube pop songs, Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, and that endless stream of “Worst Things Ever” that invades your inboxes, newsfeeds, and Twitter streams. What, exactly, draws us to these futile attempts at making songs, movies, and art? Read on for the first chapter of The Millions‘ first ebook original, Epic Fail: Bad Art, Viral Fame, and the History of the Worst Thing Ever.
December 15, 2012
A Year in Reading (And Not): Mark O’Connell 1
I’m always buying books on the basis that they are exactly the books I should be reading, while knowing that the likelihood of my ever starting them, let alone finishing them, is vanishingly small. I have no idea how many works of academic literary criticism I have bought on this basis, but it is, I fear, a number approaching shitloads.
December 3, 2012
Appearing Elsewhere 0
I wrote an essay for The Dublin Review on the strange phenomenon of Internet unboxing videos, in which people remove new purchases from their packaging and talk us through the process in exhaustive detail. You can read the whole thing online here.
November 26, 2012
Infographics of Despair: Chris Ware’s Building Stories 3
Only bad art is depressing; good art, no matter what its subject, is exhilarating.
November 7, 2012
Double Take: A Momentary Encounter With a Murderer and his Fictional Likeness 1
One evening a couple of weeks ago, I passed a murderer in the front square of Trinity College Dublin. It was Malcolm MacArthur, a man in his late sixties who spent the last thirty years in prison for killing two strangers in July of 1982. He is arguably the most notorious murderer in Ireland’s notoriously murderous history.