The Millions

It is well known that Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson had one of the more visible falling outs in literary history over the former’s English-language Eugene Onegin translation, and indeed the history of that relationship’s souring is fascinating. But even still, it’s extremely interesting to read Nabokov’s nine-page “Reply” to Wilson’s “adverse criticism.” If nothing else, one has to wonder what Wilson was thinking when he brought a knife to a gun fight.

Do you have what it takes to be a judge in The Morning News’s annual Tournament of Books? If so, your application better be in by midnight Friday.

Zoë Heller’s takedown of Salman Rushdie in the NYRB may yet ruffle some feathers, but for now it’s nabbed the top spot on New York Magazine’s approval matrix.

The New York Review of Books excerpts recent Nobel winner Mo Yan’s part fiction, part memoir Change.

“He was a sassy youngster…[A]s to burning the epistle up or not—it never occurred to me to do anything at all: what the hell did I care whether he was pertinent or impertinent? he was fresh, breezy, Irish: that was the price paid for admission—and enough: he was welcome!” Turns out Walt Whitman and Bram Stoker were pen pals.

The descendants of Ernest Hemingway’s famous cats have now become the attempted subject of federal regulation.

How to make magazine apps that aren’t completely terrible.

Elizabeth Bishop’s Brazil. And earlier: Bishop, translation, and the transmutation of loss.

“Our Aesthetic Categories, though, argues on behalf of aesthetic experiences that aren’t quite so awe-inspiring or rare. Sitting before your computers or walking the streets of your town, you don’t encounter beautiful things as frequently as you do interesting, momentarily arresting ones—and as for the sublime, when was the last time you experienced catharsis? Instead, [Sianne] Ngai considers our ‘minor’ aesthetic experiences, the ones that make up our day.” In the era of adorkable and nerd chic, Slate looks at Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting.

New this week are A Possible Life: A Novel in Five Parts by Sebastian Faulks and the first six titles (A through F!) in Penguin’s snazzy new Penguin Drop Caps series. Bonus Links: You can now subscribe to listings of literary new releases in your feed reader with this RSS feed. Plus, check out more new release RSS feeds here.

At Longform, you can find a nifty old essay, originally published in 1990 in The Missouri Review, in which Mark Costello and David Foster Wallace pay a visit to a pioneering rap studio.

Bloom, the new site that grew out of our Post-40 Bloomers series, is seeking to grow its staff.  Check out the two position descriptions here.