http://www.themillions.com Wed, 17 Mar 2010 02:09:18 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en J.D. Salinger’s books speckled New York this week, as a chorus of readers gave the author an impromptu final salute. Spotted on the subway, 11:15 on Saturday night: Nine Stories en route to  Coney Island, devoured with a pencil in hand. Monday morning on Broadway it was Catcher in the ... http://www.themillions.com/2010/02/on-rereading-j-d-salinger.html One of the curses of fame in the age of mechanical reproduction is the way it renders the strange ubiquitous, the sublime habitual. There is the first time you hear "Born to Run," and there is the umpteenth, and by the time you get to the guy drunkenly karaokeing it ... http://www.themillions.com/2010/01/j-d-salinger-1919-2010.html Relative to, say, Balloon Boy, the recent death of Claude Levi-Strauss has received scant media attention here in the U.S. This is surely indicative of something, anthropologically speaking: the rate at which the world is going to hell, perhaps, or maybe just the low esteem in which we hold intellectuals ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/11/claude-levi-strauss-1908-2009.html TriQuarterly, the long-running trail-blazing literary journal more or less dreamed into existence by the late Charles Newman, is apparently no more, due to budget cuts at Northwestern University. Newman's foreword to his first issue as editor, reprinted at A Public Space, should be required reading for anyone thinking about ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/10/requiescat-in-pace-triquarterly.html In Jim Carroll's first collection of poems, published when he was in his early twenties, there's a couplet about a beach "where on the puzzled reef dwarves either / fish or drown in the abandoned ships." It's a typical Carroll image: hallucinatory at first blush but grounded, upon closer inspection, ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/09/jim-carroll-1950-2009.html It would be a shame if the death of the Russian novelist Vasily Aksyonov yesterday got lost in the welter of cultural losses that surrounds it. Aksyonov is one of the towering literary figures of the postwar era - one who might have been more widely recognized as such were ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/07/vasily-aksyonov-giant-of-russian_07.html When other writers at a 1986 PEN panel on "How the State Imagines" were lamenting Cold War militarism, John Updike offered a hymn of praise for the U.S. Postal Service: "I never see a blue mailbox without a spark of warmth and wonder and gratitude that this intricate and extensive ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/01/john-updike-1932-2009_8642.html As many have likely already heard, John Updike died today. The New York Times and innumerable other outlets are remembering his gargantuan contribution to American letters. We've talked about Updike many times here at the Millions; for starters, there was Corey Vilhauer on the Rabbit Angstrom novels, James ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/01/john-updike-rip_420.html Glenn Goldman, founder and owner of Book Soup, an independent book store in West Hollywood died yesterday. Goldman died of pancreatic cancer, an illness that came on suddenly, and he leaves behind two sons and his store. Glenn created, almost out of nothing, a great treasure of a ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/01/remembering-glenn-goldman-and-book-soup_1913.html Glenn Goldman, the owner and founder of Book Soup in West Hollywood, California, died yesterday from complications from pancreatic cancer. He was 58 years old.I first worked at Book Soup when I was nineteen, and I returned after graduating from college. I loved the place, and I still do; ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/01/rip-glenn-goldman_3469.html