That Was Fast

Tablet Magazine publishes Booker prize winner (and one-time ranked junior table tennis player) Howard Jacobson’s essay on flamboyant ping-pong champ Marty Reisman for the first time in the U.S.

Alexandra Kleeman’s debut novel includes, among other discomfiting things, a series of fake advertisements for surreal women’s beauty products. The plot, which follows a proofreader named A, begins with the main character’s attempt to evade her roommate, and eventually brings A to join a “Church of Conjoined Eaters.” At Slate, Molly Fischer argues the book deftly captures our society’s weird treatment of femininity.

We’ve covered The New York Times Bookends column before. This week, Benjamin Moser and Year in Reading alumna Rivka Galchen discuss unforgivable sins in literature.

Yesterday, Jane Jacobs, author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, would have turned 100. Some used the anniversary to commemorate her life and others argued that we need to stop deifying her.