http://www.themillions.com Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:52:57 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en 1. Uwe Johnson never quite knew what to do with the self-satisfied authority of superlatives. He was interested in the inconclusive, the ambiguous, and preferred observing things from the edge. The texture of a frame seemed to him more revealing than the painting, the smell of ink on one’s fingers more ... http://www.themillions.com/2010/03/the-edge-too-has-its-edge-reading-uwe-johnson-in-new-york.html With John Jodzio’s If You Lived Here You’d Already Be Home, Replacement Press, whose mission statement declares their reason for existence being a belief that “the next generation, our generation (Gen Y, Millennials) has not just something to say, but brilliant writers to say it,” boldly announces its arrival to ... http://www.themillions.com/2010/03/millennium-bridge-john-jodzio%e2%80%99s-if-you-lived-here-you%e2%80%99d-already-be-home.html Thou are the thing itself; unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art. —King Lear The dilemma of the likable character. It’s good to have a character who we root for, who has flaws but works to overcome them. We are taught as fledgling ... http://www.themillions.com/2010/03/unaccommodated-man-robert-stones-fun-with-problems.html Dutch writer Margriet de Moor belongs to a select group: she writes literary fiction in a foreign language, she’s not a man, and she’s had consistent critical success in the United States. Since 1991, four of her novels, which include The Kreutzer Sonata and The Virtuoso, were ... http://www.themillions.com/2010/03/send-in-the-drowned-margriet-de-moors-the-storm.html I usually avoid talking about how much I love small presses. Partly because my feeling is that I’m so completely, obviously biased (both my novels are published by a smallish independent press, and I’m very happy with this state of affairs) that my opinion on the matter doesn’t carry much ... http://www.themillions.com/2010/02/brooklyn-underdog-hesh-kestins-the-iron-will-of-shoeshine-cats.html Armed with cameras rather than guns, World War II photographers braved bombed-out, bullet-riddled and death-strewn landscapes serving as the eyes for those not in the fields of battle, documenting the scale of loss and destruction. Robert Capa, the most iconic of these photographers, stormed Omaha Beach on D-Day just like ... http://www.themillions.com/2010/02/photography-comes-of-age-street-seen.html The teenage and twenty-somethings who people Justin Taylor’s Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever face many impediments to happiness, and principal among these is debilitating self-obsession. Taylor depicts a generation raised on video games and cable-news politics, a nation where alcohol abuse and sexual discord are the main rites ... http://www.themillions.com/2010/02/reckless-and-dangerous-justin-taylor%e2%80%99s-everything-here-is-the-best-thing-ever.html Fans of Raymond Carver’s short fiction got a treat last year when the Library of America published the celebrated writer’s Collected Stories. Yet for some of his readers, the book cast a disquieting shadow over his career and work. Editors William Stull and Maureen Carroll included in this new volume ... http://www.themillions.com/2010/02/its-all-right-to-cry-restoring-raymond-carvers-voice.html There is a kind of Turkish music called Arabesk.  I'm not an expert, but by rough definition it is very sad and melodramatic, the kind of music to which old men sit and drink a booze called rakı (lion's milk, to the Arabesk crowd) and wave their hands and sing along and ... http://www.themillions.com/2010/01/prousts-arabesk-the-museum-of-innocence-by-orhan-pamuk.html Two authors walk into a room. One - brooding, macho, fixated on war, fighting, hunting, and conflict in general. The second - driven to drink, floating above the revelers, with a crazy wife to deal with. If the mythmakers have done their job over the decades, you know exactly who ... http://www.themillions.com/2010/01/mythbusting-an-inside-look-at-the-last-days-of-the-moveable-feast.html