Librarians might frown on P.D.A. in the library, that is, Public Displays of Affection by canoodling college couples. But another kind of P.D.A. might bring a different, more welcome sort of disruption to the library: Patron-Driven Acquisition, a model of e-book licensing that aims to relieve library purchasing agents from spending thousands on books nobody will end up reading.
Patron-Driven Acquisition
Appearing Elsewhere
My essay on Zadie Foster Franzenides and the current state of literary aesthetics is in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine.
Believe the Autocrat
“Trump is the first candidate in memory who ran not for president but for autocrat – and won. I have lived in autocracies most of my life, and have spent much of my career writing about Vladimir Putin’s Russia. I have learned a few rules for surviving in an autocracy and salvaging your sanity and self-respect. It might be worth considering them now.” Masha Gessen for The New York Review of Books.
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Obsessing Over Women
Parul Sehgal cures your “bland biography”-induced malaise by prescribing “three delightfully deranging books” in which writers “riff on the women who’ve consumed them.”
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Recommended Reading: Outkast Edition
Recommended Reading: Bomani Jones’s essay on Outkast’s ATLiens, his first car, and the way things from your past just seem different as the years go by.
Confessional Criticism
“Contemporary criticism is positively crowded with first-person pronouns, micro-doses of memoir, brief hits of biography. Critics don’t simply wrestle with their assigned cultural object; they wrestle with themselves, as well. Recent examples suggest a spectrum, from reviews that harmlessly kick off with a personal anecdote, to hybrid pieces that blend literary criticism and longform memoir.” On why critics get personal in their essays.
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Thomas Pynchon Adaptation Gets a Release Date
Paul Thomas Anderson’s cinematic adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice now has an official release date. That’s right. Starting December 12th, you’ll be able to catch Joaquin Phoenix starring as ‘60s stoner P.I. Larry “Doc” Sportello.
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