Essays Archives - The Millions
August 1, 2017
Nicknames I Have Known (Or: An Elegy for the Mooch) 0
by Alex Norcia
There was Joe Bugs, an exterminator and small-town mayor, whose one daughter married my uncle. There was Ernie the Attorney, who grew up with Pop and became the family lawyer. There was Satellite Bob, who installed and fixed his televisions for decades. There was Video Bob, too (before my time), and there was Ralphie Boy (a hefty man, so large and so old, it’s nearly impossible to imagine him as a child).
July 31, 2017
Chronicling Life’s White Machine 10
by Adam O’Fallon Price
It is not hard to mentally recast writers as social media types: Knausgaard, the maximalist oversharer; Lerner, the pomo ironic; Cusk, the reticent philosopher; Heti, the more traditional diarist.
July 28, 2017
Requiem for a Reader 0
by Sarah Cords
My first memory of my father as a reader was him telling me to hurry up; it was almost time to silflay.
July 27, 2017
When Capitalism and Christianity Collide in Fiction 2
by Ken Hines
According to a recent study, 38 percent of Christians say “capitalism is at odds with Christian values.” Those findings echo a stubborn tension between Christianity and capitalism in American life, an uneasiness that shows up repeatedly in American fiction.
July 27, 2017
Brevity Is the Soul of It: In Praise of Short Books 0
by Kyle Chayka
Short books are not narratives, but devices: instead of the telescope of a long novel or history tome, they are a pair of sunglasses, allowing you to see the world, briefly and temporarily, in a different shade.
July 25, 2017
Apocalypse Then: Meet the Original Rapture Novels 9
by Susan Gray Blue
Whether I believed the Antichrist would actually posses a ruby laser ring that harnessed the power of the sun into “a devastating laser beam of destruction” that could wipe out buildings in a poof, I definitely believed the Antichrist would show up and have lots of tricks up his sleeve. And I didn’t want to stick around for it. I wanted to be raptured.
July 24, 2017
Heretics in the Marketplace 0
by Chris Gay
The ballot box was now obsolete, supplanted by a vast, continual referendum that had rendered political institutions little more than speed bumps on the road to market efficiency.
July 21, 2017
How Can Historical Fiction Be Feminist? 8
by Greer Macallister
The very act of centering a novel on a woman’s story, of giving her the same respect and attention men’s stories have traditionally received, can be feminist.
July 19, 2017
Searching for Complexity: Motherhood in Fiction 4
by Charlotte Donlon
I’m on a quest to surround myself with complex mothers. I’m going to seek them in novels, in stories I can enter during months when my own complexity seems to shine brighter. The women I’ll turn to can’t hear me when I talk back to them, but they can be my companions.
July 19, 2017
A Bookseller’s Elegy 246
by Douglas Koziol
What can you do when a customer wants a book that you not only find objectionable but also believe actually dangerous in the lessons it portends amidst such a politically precarious time?