Scott Schuman, also known as The Sartorialist, has published a book of his on-the-street fashion photographs. For a taste of what’s in the book, take a look at his blog, The Sartorialist.
The Sartorialist
BLM, the Novel
“Starr-Starr, you do whatever they tell you to do,” he said. “Keep your hands visible. Don’t make any sudden moves. Only speak when they speak to you.” Read an excerpt from the Black Lives Matter–inspired YA novel The Hate U Give by A. C. Thomas, scheduled for release next June. See also some of our favorite writers on their favorite political writing, or our review of Nate Marshall’s poetry collection, Wild Hundreds, which critic Emmanuel N. Adolf Alzuphar called “the foremost articulation of contemporary blackness’s dynamism in literature.”
The Young Library
One downside to being an internationally acclaimed author is that people care an awful lot about digging into your past. Haruki Murakami has found this out the hard way, as a librarian from Kobe High School (which Murakami attended during his younger years) has made public a list of books checked out by then-budding author. For more “Murakami meets library,” here’s a review of his own The Strange Library.
A Front-Row Seat
For the most part, Alexis de Tocqueville had good things to say about the young United States in his book Democracy in America, which is probably why we tend to forget that he thought Americans weren’t funny. What de Tocqueville missed, according to a new history of American humor, is the extent to which American funniness emerged from subversive groups of outsiders. In Bookforum, Ben Schwartz takes stock of the arguments in American Fun.
Thirty Princes
In every country except France, the copyright for The Little Prince expired at the end of last year, which explains why Turkish publishers chose the first two weeks of January to publish a huge number of new translations of the book. At the LRB blog, Millions contributor Kaya Genc writes about the flood of new editions, remarking on the significance of a passage about a Turkish astronomer.
From the Mixed Up Files of DFW
Newsweek takes an “infinitely fascinating quest” through David Foster Wallace’s just-released archive at University of Texas’ Harry Ransom Center.
Who Wrote It First
Nabokov fans, brace yourselves! Nabokov scholar Michael Maar accuses the author of stealing the premise of Lolita from another writer. Pair with this Millions essay about designing the cover of the book.