Robert A. Caro, who releases new installments of his Lyndon B. Johnson biography at a glacial pace, is apparently also working on another project, too. It’s “not a memoir, exactly,” he says, but it does concern “how he came to write the Johnson biography and its predecessor, The Power Broker.”
Maybe This Is Why They Take So Long to Finish
On “Buzzwordophilia”
In the latest Baffler, Evgeny Morozov argues that Silicon Valley, in typical fashion, has taken to “hacking” our language. Old, trusted words don’t mean what they used to mean, and complex ideas have been stripped of subversive implications. “Complexity,” he writes, “is not particularly viral.”
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Bad Titles
"There’s something to be said for allusive titles: they can be intriguing and draw you in. And obscure titles at least make a change from the current trend for The Woman Who Climbed out of Her Car and Mowed the Lawn. (I made that one up, though it could be a bestseller). But when it comes to titles that are simply misleading, there are just far, far too many." In a piece for the Guardian Moira Remond considers some of the most misleading and misunderstood book titles, such as John Williams's Stoner (which our own Claire Cameron wrote about here.)
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A Bookish Jurassic Park
Recommended reading: before you head to the theaters for the latest Jurassic Park film, make sure you know the series's bookish roots.
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A Screwball Tragedy
"Expertly constructed, Mister Monkey is so fresh and new it’s almost giddy, almost impudent with originality. Tender and artful, Prose’s 15th novel is a sophisticated satire, a gently spiritual celebration of life, a dark and thoroughly grim depiction of despair, a screwball comedy, a screwball tragedy." Cathleen Schine reviews Francine Prose's newest novel, Mister Monkey, over at The New York Times.