![]() In a culture that is obsessed with understanding the intimate details of celebrity lives, Millet chooses “celebrities” outside of the paparazzi realm, public figures we perhaps have ideas and assumptions about but are not akin to Britney Spears or Paris Hilton. ![]() While the first story leaves the impression that the book will poke fun at the vapidity of super-stardom, Millet’s subsequent character choices are much more interesting and complex: Noam Chomsky, Thomas Edison, Jimmy Carter, Nikola Tesla. The book opens with a playful monologue by the Pop Goddess herself, Madonna, who has killed a pheasant on her Scottish estate. It is the animals, and not so much the human characters, that instill the stories with emotion and perspective. ![]() ![]() In Lydia Millet’s BOMB Interview with Jonathan Lethem, Millet speaks of her captivation with animals, saying “Animals are like rock stars, they have that charisma.” In Millet’s new short story collection, Love in Infant Monkeys, she treats animals as rock star characters, paralleling them with real-life celebrities to create stories both eccentric and, in unexpected ways, honest. ![]()
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