http://www.themillions.com Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:16:04 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The Irish novelist John Banville is a prolific author of prodigious talent. He has written fifteen novels, although the tally rises to eighteen if you count the three crime novels he has penned under the name Benjamin Black since 2005. Banville’s elegant prose elicits frequent comparison to Nabokov and his ... http://www.themillions.com/2010/02/the-millions-interview-john-banville.html Following is a continuation of my interview-conversation with David Shields, author of 10 books of fiction and nonfiction, most recently Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, the subject of this interview.  Click here for Part One, wherein we discuss the nature of a “manifesto,” love of lists, Leonardo DiCaprio, Joyce, Chekhov, the ... http://www.themillions.com/2010/02/the-millions-interview-david-shields-part-two.html David Shields's Reality Hunger: A Manifesto has been eagerly anticipated by many, including The Millions. (Note to reader: It might be useful to click over to Max Magee’s pre-pub consideration of it – including a description of the book’s format and structure – from last summer.) Reality Hunger: A Manifesto ... http://www.themillions.com/2010/02/the-millions-interview-david-shields-part-one.html For several years, it seemed as though the book industry was getting a reprieve. As the music industry was ravaged by file sharing, and the film and TV industry were increasingly targeted by downloaders, book piracy was but a quaint cul de sac in the vast file sharing ecology. ... http://www.themillions.com/2010/01/confessions-of-a-book-pirate.html The Russian language is the real hero of Tolstoy's masterpiece; it is his voice of truth. The English-speaking world is indebted to these two magnificent translators, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, for revealing more of its hidden riches than any who have tried to translate the book before. -- Orlando ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/12/the-millions-interview-richard-pevear-and-larissa-volokhonsky.html I first met Lynne Tillman at Housing Works, on a night she read with Paula Fox. I brought a first edition of her novel No Lease on Life for her to sign. I’d found the book tucked away in the towering stacks at the Strand, still in pristine condition and ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/10/the-millions-interview-lynne-tillman.html Tao Lin's new novella, Shoplifting from American Apparel, is about a young writer named Sam who, for mysterious reasons, steals from American Apparel repeatedly and unsuccessfully, and lands himself in jail. The story is told a spare, unemotional voice that is, at turns, funny and strange and yet somehow casts ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/10/the-millions-interview-tao-lin.html Phillip Lopate is a master of many literary forms. Best known as an essayist and a champion of the personal essay, Lopate has also written three books of fiction and two volumes of poetry, with his next, At the End of the Day, forthcoming in January. This spring Princeton University ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/08/the-millions-interview-phillip-lopate.html Dan Chaon's most recent novel, Await Your Reply, is a masterful tale of identity and how it's made, stolen, and remade.  The book, with its three interlocking stories, and locales as disparate as Las Vegas, Nebraska, and the Arctic, is intensely readable, but as Janet Maslin of The New York ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/08/the-millions-interview-dan-chaon.html Future Missionaries of America by Matthew Vollmer and Floodmarkers by Nic Brown are short story collections from debut writers with enormous gifts. Their work is beautiful, funny, and delightfully weird. Matthew and Nic were my classmates at Iowa, where they proved to be not only talented writers, but also sharp ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/06/millions-interview-matthew-vollmer-and_25.html