C. Max Magee
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Articles by C. Max Magee
Modern In A Post-Modern World
There's an old Woody Allen nightclub routine, dating back to his stand-up days in the mid-60s, that goes a little like this: "I was in Europe many years ago with Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway had just written his first novel, and Gertrude Stein and I read it, and we said that is was a good novel, but not a great one, and that it needed some work, but it could be a fine book. And we laughed over it. Hemingway punched me in the mouth.
Founder's Picks: The Best of The Millions
The demise of BuzzFeed News and a new book by BuzzFeed’s founder Ben Smith about the bygone era of viral news have generated nostalgic (and sometimes embittered) pieces revisiting the online media boom in the heady days of free-flowing social media traffic. What I remember about that time—say, 2007 to 2014—was not the sense that The Millions was surfing a cresting wave of clicks and virality but rather that we were participating in a moment of unusual turmoil and excitement.
The Millions Top Ten: June 2022
We spend plenty of time here at The Millions telling all of you what we've been reading, but we are also quite interested in hearing about what you've been reading. By looking at our Amazon stats, we can see what books Millions readers have been buying, and we decided it would be fun to use those stats to find out what books have been most popular with our readers in recent months. Below you'll find our Millions Top Ten list for June.
Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Habib, Kaplan, Zevin, and More
Here's a quick look at some notable books-new titles from Conner Habib, Isabel Kaplan, Gabrielle Zevin, and more-that are publishing this week. Want to learn more about upcoming titles? Then go read our most recent book preview. Want to help The Millions keep churning out great books coverage? Then become a member today. Here's what Publishers Weekly had to say about Hawk Mountain: "Unresolved emotional conflict from adolescence haunts a man in Habib's intensely unsettling debut.
Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Brooks, Newman, Taddeo, and More
Here's a quick look at some notable books-new titles from Geraldine Brooks, Sandra Newman, Lisa Taddeo, and more-that are publishing this week. Want to learn more about upcoming titles? Then go read our most recent book preview. Want to help The Millions keep churning out great books coverage? Then become a member today.
The Millions Top Ten: May 2022
We spend plenty of time here at The Millions telling all of you what we've been reading, but we are also quite interested in hearing about what you've been reading. By looking at our Amazon stats, we can see what books Millions readers have been buying, and we decided it would be fun to use those stats to find out what books have been most popular with our readers in recent months. Below you'll find our Millions Top Ten list for May.
The Millions Top Ten: April 2022
We spend plenty of time here on The Millions telling all of you what we've been reading, but we are also quite interested in hearing about what you've been reading. By looking at our Amazon stats, we can see what books Millions readers have been buying, and we decided it would be fun to use those stats to find out what books have been most popular with our readers in recent months. Below you'll find our Millions Top Ten list for April. By golly, you pulled it off.
The Profound Impacts of Decency: On 'Hello, Bookstore'
1. "Oh god, how this story emerges from my bones!" After her debut novel, Strangers on a Train, was made into a hit movie by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951, Patricia Highsmith was under pressure from her publisher and agent to go back to the well and write another "novel of suspense." But Highsmith, who could be mulish, had different ideas.
Proper Poetical Education - The Millions
"The metaphor whose manage we are best taught in poetry-- that is all there is of thinking." - Robert Frost, "Education by Poetry: A Meditative Monologue" From the backseat, my three-year-old asks, "What does 'Take a sad song and make it better' mean?" We'd been listening to The Beatles, and it seems this line had lodged itself inside him. He does this often--chews on something a few days before asking about it. When I brought this up to a colleague, he took my son's question quite literally.
At Write or Die Tribe, Jenny Tinghui Zhang discusses her debut novel, Four Treasures in the Sky, and shares advice for emerging writers trying to finish their books. "Don't get distracted by the progress of others and that's a roundabout way of saying, you know, don't compare yourself to the progress of others or what others are doing," she says. "Don't feel panicked or in distress because something good is happening for someone else.
Ten Essential Fictional Frenemies
10. Emma by Jane Austen I saw Clueless so many times before I actually read Emma, so that Austen's Emma and Harriet are seemingly entwined with Amy Heckerling's Cher and Tai. Either way, this was the fictional friendship I thought of the most while writing Wildcat. Emma and Harriet's friendship is born of a specific order. Emma is the leader and Harriet is a happy follower. This is fine at first, but what happens when the leader loses her footing and the follower loses a bit of belief?
Revisiting the Ghosts of Old Drafts with John Keene
At , John Keene discusses his newest decades-in-the-making poetry collection, , as well as his process for revisiting his older work, repurposing older versions of poems, and constantly approaching his creative process with questions rather than answers. "Rereading the older poems myself, I noticed certain key words and images over and over," Keene explains. "I can see ghostly traces of previous versions.
The Millions Top Ten: February 2022
We spend plenty of time here on The Millions telling all of you what we've been reading, but we are also quite interested in hearing about what you've been reading. By looking at our Amazon stats, we can see what books Millions readers have been buying, and we decided it would be fun to use those stats to find out what books have been most popular with our readers in recent months. Below you'll find our Millions Top Ten list for February. We joked last month that placed on our Top Ten once more.
Lucy Scholes on the Controlled Elegance of Edith Templeton
At the Paris Review, Lucy Scholes takes a closer look at the early novels of Edith Templeton, in which inflexible matriarchal figures are cast against society's expectations. "In a society in which impressions are critical, nothing is ever quite as it seems; in Templeton's novels, a polished exterior inevitably obscures a grubbier truth," Scholes writes.
Ten Groundbreaking True Crime Books
How long do moments last? For the genre of true crime, this current moment is roughly seven and a half years old, dating back to the immense popularity of the podcast Serial's first season in the fall of 2014. But crime and murder are a perennial fascination, dating back centuries. Think of the preacher Cotton Mather's pamphlets in the late 17th century, or Benjamin Franklin's early yellow journalism. Or, well, the Bible.
Sheila Heti on Writing Without Fear
At the , Sheila Heti is in conversation with Hadley Freeman as she discusses her newest novel, Pure Colour, and explains why she continues to write honestly and openly about sex and love in her books without letting self doubt or uncertainty sway her. "I never feel exposed because there's nothing inside me that isn't in you," Heti says. "All writing is about all of us, so it doesn't feel like I'm saying anything that isn't just about the human experience."
The Many-Layered Characters of Marlon James
At the Brooklyn Rail, Marlon James discusses Moon Witch, Spider King, the second book in his medieval African fantasy trilogy, which features a cast of unforgettable characters. "Man, if you're in a Marlon James novel, you were constructed haphazardly," he says. "People in real life, you know, don't reveal themselves in a sequential way, starting with the A of their lives and taking us to Z.
The Millions Top Ten: January 2022
We spend plenty of time here on The Millions telling all of you what we've been reading, but we are also quite interested in hearing about what you've been reading. By looking at our Amazon stats, we can see what books Millions readers have been buying, and we decided it would be fun to use those stats to find out what books have been most popular with our readers in recent months. Below you'll find our Millions Top Ten list for January.
Nine Haunting Postapocalyptic Novels
I started reading postapocalyptic fiction in my teens, somewhere between my Herman Hesse phase and my Russian phase, collectively known as the Billy No-Mates Years. It was the mid-90s. Thatcher was a memory and the Berlin Wall was half a decade down. The IRA was on the verge of declaring a ceasefire. Hope was a marketable commodity and it seemed that progress was irreversible. Things could only get better.
Twenty-First-Century Seoul, as Told by Sang Young Park
At, Sang Young Park discusses his English-language debut novel, Love in the Big City, an ambitious love story told in a colloquial tone with copious pop culture references. "Being a young writer in the twenty-first century is exactly like being a young person in the twenty-first century," he says. "It's complicated and hard but fun. I live a life completely immersed in popular culture. I wake up in the morning and shower to music, and I watch Netflix with my coffee and breakfast.
Kaveh Akbar Refuses to Flatten His Poetry
At the , Kaveh Akbar discusses his newest poetry collection, Pilgrim Bell, and why he avoids giving literal explanations for his work. "To reduce a poem to a purely autobiographical, experiential reading feels limiting to me," Akbar explains. "To reduce a poem to an 'aboutness' seems limiting to me. The poet Allen Grossman said, 'A poem is about a thing the way a cat is about a house.' I always appreciated that.
The Millions Top Ten: December 2021
We spend plenty of time here on The Millions telling all of you what we've been reading, but we are also quite interested in hearing about what you've been reading. By looking at our Amazon stats, we can see what books Millions readers have been buying, and we decided it would be fun to use those stats to find out what books have been most popular with our readers in recent months. Below you'll find our Millions Top Ten list for December. I need you to hold on.
An Examination of the Trauma Plot
AtThe New Yorker, Parul Sehgal reflects on the trauma plot and how it has come to dominate stories both on the page and on screen. Sehgal argues that "The trauma plot flattens, distorts, reduces character to symptom, and, in turn, instructs and insists upon its moral authority. The solace of its simplicity comes at no little cost.
Raven Leilani on Writing Complex and Contradictory Black Women Protagonists
At The Guardian, Hephzibah Anderson interviews Raven Leilani,author of the award-winning novel Now published in paperback, Leilani's sexy and blisteringly honest debut follows Edie, a 23-year-old black woman and aspiring painter trying to stay afloat in New York City. But after being fired from her publishing job, she finds herself moving in with her married white lover and his family.
Sequoia Nagamatsu's Dystopian Debut Is a Must-Read for the New Year
At, Sequioa Nagamatsu discusses How High We Go in the Dark, his much-awaited debut novel told through interconnected first-person narratives about people living in a future beset by the Arctic Plague. Nagamatsu discusses the various media and books that were influential to his conception of the book, what eco-conscious novels can contribute to the environmental movement, and how he went about choosing the particular professions of the characters featured in this prophetic novel.
Those Who Left Us: Literary Obits of 2021
This highly selective list of literary lights that were extinguished during the past year ranges from brand names to barely-knowns. Feel free to add your own names to the list in the comments section below. Joan Didion, anyone? Scott Donaldson While working as a newspaper reporter in Virginia in 1988, I got sent to the College of William & Mary to interview Scott Donaldson, a professor who had just published a biography of John Cheever.
A Year in Reading: Krys Malcolm Belc
Two thousand twenty-one was a year of reading lonely people. As one year melted into another, Claire Danes read me Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey. I walked around a cold and gray and empty Philadelphia, embittered and lonely and feeling brattily like I was entitled to another life. I scoffed at the man in the epic traveling the world feeling the same. He was out to sea in his way, I in mine, kicking rocks down the sidewalk in Fishtown. More lonely protagonists awaited me.
A Year in Reading: Mateo Askaripour
My name is Mateo Askaripour, and I am a reader. I guess it goes without saying that everyone here is, but it's important that I get that off my chest. It all started when I was three, with Clifford. I couldn't get enough of that big red dog. Then I moved on toDoctor De Soto, a mouse who was also a dentist. And before long, I was past Franklinand Frog and Toad and hooked on the hard stuff. I guess that's why this was such a strange year of reading for me.
The Millions Top Ten: November 2021
We spend plenty of time here on The Millions telling all of you what we've been reading, but we are also quite interested in hearing about what you've been reading. By looking at our Amazon stats, we can see what books Millions readers have been buying, and we decided it would be fun to use those stats to find out what books have been most popular with our readers in recent months. Below you'll find our Millions Top Ten list for November.
A Year in Reading: Arif Anwar
I'm on track to have finished a book a week in 2021, which I'm happy with given that so much of my time is spoken for by family, work, and writing. I don't like stuffing 100-plus books into a year like passengers in a rush hour subway car, leaving me unable to savor, reflect upon, or even mourn a memorable read. I am selective in what I read, sometimes strategic- a "selfish reader" who "consume[s] literature for the sustenance of my own writing," as Anthony Veasna So put it last year.
A Year in Reading: Eric Nguyen
In 2020, I stopped journaling. With everything happening that year, life didn't seem as observable. Every day, the pandemic raged on. I stayed at home. There were no dinners with friends or readings to attend. It felt too depressing to write down. But in 2021, I made it a goal to get back into journaling because I felt I would miss out on a lot of memories, even if those memories were simply another mundane day-for what is life but a series of mundane days?
A Year in Reading: Anjali Enjeti
First, a confession: I read fewer books during the first year of the pandemic than any other time in my reading life. It was easier for me to catch up on episodes of Shahs of Sunset than crack open a book. My mind was a sieve, struggling to sift through language and meaning. Many days, I found myself too spent to glance at the pile on my nightstand. In the summer of 2021, when Covid cases declined and my youngest child became eligible for the vaccine, reading slowly seeped its way back into my life.
A Year in Reading: Gina Apostol
When the pandemic began I worked fiercely on finishing a novel I had started but dropped a few years ago-because that's what I do under stress: I buckle down and write. It's how I cope. Work is my pleasure and my lifeline. So mostly what I read at the beginning of the year were odd books on the first years of American occupation of the Philippines, 1899 to 1905 or so-one of the time-spans in my novel.
The Millions 2021 Gift Guide for Readers and Writers
It's time again for The Millions annual gift guide for the readers and writers in your life. If "social-distancing" was last year's suddenly ubiquitous turn-of-phrase, this year it's "supply-chain issues." So, shop early, shop used, shop local, and if your favorite author has a book coming out soon, preorder it! Magic 8-Ball The writer's life is one of uncertainty. Let the Magic 8-Ball answer writers burning questions, e.g. Will The New York Times review my book? Will I get a call from Terry Gross?
Fraud by David Rakoff
“Like speech, which leaves no mark in the air,” Teju Cole writes in the calmly incantatory and unsettlingly alert Blind Spot, “our bodies leave no mark in space.” On the facing page is a photograph of two Berliners, two strangers, caught in a moment of uncanny resemblance. Blind Spot is comprised of text-image pairings, each of which takes a place-name as its title.
Always Make it Personal: The Millions Interviews Adrian Tomine
Adrian Tomine was a teenager when his self-published comic Optic Nerve first received attention, and in the years since he's carved out a career as an illustrator, occasional New Yorker cover artist, and one of the great cartoonists of his generation. So much of his work revolves around silence, unexpected encounters, characters grappling with time and change.
How to Write the Perfect Five-Paragraph Essay
It was my job for a time to corral college freshmen, feed them books and then coax from them fits of insight five paragraphs at a time. This I did imperfectly. I asked them to think about their lives to concoct a narrative or descriptive piece from those thoughts. Or I'd place a book or a film in front of them and guide them down a twisting path of analysis.
Memorizing and Memory: A Writer's Estranged Cousins
1. Memorizing My lines disappeared. I was in 10th grade, dressed in a blue-checked gingham dress and white tights, playing the lead in Alice and Wonderland for an audience of children. I’d had memory lapses before—an embarrassing one in my piano teacher’s living room in fifth grade, the specific, awkward misery of having to begin the sonatina again. The assembled families either would or would not pretend it didn’t happen, both options mortifying.
[CLOSED] The Millions Is Hiring a Web Editor
We are no longer accepting applications for this position. The Millions is hiring a new Web Editor. This is an exciting, paid opportunity to play a key role at The Millions involved in the editing, production, and presentation of our longform pieces. You will help shape the work beloved by a readership that boasts a laundry list of influential, brilliant folks in publishing, media, and academia - not to mention the most engaged, avid readers you'll find anywhere.
A Year in Reading: Kima Jones
I've been making lists since my father died in September. Lists of the things I need to do, lists of the things I need to finish, lists of business expenditures, lists for tax-season preparedness. When my father was dying in the hospital I read poems to him. The breathing tube prevented him from speaking to me, but he would move his head from side to side or groan or widen his eyes to let me know he was cued into the recitation.
Chronicling Life's White Machine
"I came to realize that far more important to me than any plot or conventional sense was the sheer directionality I felt while reading prose, the texture of time as it passed, life's white machine." - Ben Lerner, Leaving the Atocha Station In the creative writing classes I teach, my students-most of them brand new at writing fiction-often go crazy writing plot.
The Best of The Millions: 2016
Judy writes in looking for something to read on an upcoming trip abroad:I am going to Paris for a week in April. I want to read at least a couple novels set in Paris before I go. I want them to be contemporary (as in written recently) by a French author but translated into English. Any suggestions?I’ve read a number of novels set in Paris, and I’ve read some contemporary French fiction, but I can’t recall having read any contemporary French fiction set in Paris.
Before They Were Notable: 2016
This year's New York Times Notable Books of the Year list is out. At 100 titles, the list is more of a catalog of the noteworthy than a distinction. Sticking with the fiction exclusively, it appears that we touched upon a few of these books and authors as well: Editor This is the byline used for site announcements and for articles by more than one Millions contributor.
On Writing Challenges
To satisfy his creditors, Fyodor Dostoevsky famously wrote The Gambler in four weeks. He was a roulette demon with a habit of losing more than he won. If he finished this new book in less than a month, all his debts would be cleared; if he failed, he'd lose everything. Dostoevsky pulled it off, of course; and in a final coup, he later married the stenographer who'd helped him.
Burn After Reading: On Writerly Self-Immolation
Gerard Manley Hopkins burned all of his poems before becoming a priest. He called his act the "slaughter of the innocents." Jesuits begin their study with a two-year novitiate period, during which Hopkins did not write a single line of verse - in fact, he would only write fragments for the next seven years. Hopkins struggled with the divergent pulls of poetry and prayer. That tension coaxed his best and most unique material.
The Voice Trap: On the Perils of Authorial Parochialism
In 1998, David Foster Wallace published an essay titled "Neither Adult Nor Entertainment"[1] in Premiere magazine using not one but two pseudonyms. Though he was apparently outted against his will as its sole author, it seems strange to imagine he thought he could pull off the deception.
Lessons From No: Writers on Their Most Formative Rejections
Rejections bring writers together. We trade stories of abysmally long response times, boilerplate replies addressed Dear writer, and the requisite practice of pinning rejection slips to walls. F. Scott Fitzgerald covered his bedroom with the 122 rejections he received in the spring of 1919 alone. Stephen King "pounded a nail" into the wall to "impale" his rejections. Rebecca Skloot displays her rejections for The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks as a constant reminder of editorial subjectivity.
The Weight of Knowledge: On Moving Books
"Forty-five?" "Yes, sir, 45 boxes over the original moving estimate." "How much is that going to cost?" "Well, the revised estimate adds another 1,000 pounds, so $450." "Jesus." "But that's just a weight estimate. It could be a lot less depending on what's in them. They could be filled with pillows for instance. What is in them?" "Not pillows." Many were filled with books, hundreds of them. And if the mover was to believed, they weighed about half a ton: the approximate weight of my knowledge.
Rising to the Surface
By Kaulie Lewis,C. Max Magee,Nick Moran,Thom Beckwith,Kirstin Butler,Elise Liu,Emily M. Keeler "In real life, we are often so bound by social convention, but at the same time we all have secret, inexplicable aspects of ourselves. The parts that nobody else sees. In fiction, we are not bound by social convention, so the things that mystify and unsettle are allowed to rise to the surface." Salon interviews Laura van den Berg about her new novel, , which we covered in our Great 2015 Book Preview.
Gather Your Acolytes About You: Advice for Aspiring Writers
Sometimes, like most storytellers with a book or two under their belt, I'm asked if I have any advice for younger or less experienced writers. I hope the following five tips can be of some assistance. 1. Exhaust other paths to earthly renown. Before you sit down to write, carefully ensure that a ticket to widespread adulation, or at the very least cultural relevance, is not more readily available from a more auspicious venue.
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