Recommended Reading: Tony Kushner’s recent speech at the Whiting Writers’ Awards.
Failing Upwards
Much Ado about Journalism and Fact-Checking
Chris Rose laments the erosion of his former employer, New Orleans’s Times-Picayune, in the pages of Oxford American’s New South Journalism issue. Meanwhile, James Pogue discusses the art of fact-checking, which he says “has recently become a voguish topic among the New Yorker-reading and NPR-listening set.” This is of course to say nothing of the London Review of Books-reading set across the pond as well, much less the Onion-reading set located far and wide.
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DARE, Hear Americans Talk
In 1965, researchers set out in campers to hear Americans talk. The Dictionary of American Regional English is a road trip of the mind. (Via Arts & Letters Daily.)
We Just Turn to the Comics
In the NYRB, a new article on Chris Ware, accompanied by an old joke -- dreamt up by none other than Gore Vidal -- that a hypothetical New York Review of Comic Books might replace its eponymous predecessor. Last week, our own Mark O’Connell reviewed Mr. Ware’s latest book.
Letter from Scott Turow
Anyone who cares about the financial viability of the book business should read Author's Guild President Scott Turow's open letter on the implications of the government's threatened anti-trust suit against major publishers and Apple over alleged collusion in e-book pricing.
The Book Prisons Fear
The New York Times dives into why prisons fear the New Jim Crow certain states have gone to great efforts to allow their prisons to ban it and in other states it's fairly difficult to obtain if you're a prisoner. We're big fans of the New Jim Crow here; it was a Millions staff pick and extremely popular on Year in Reading lists back in 2013.
Hugo Lindgren’s AMA
Hugo Lindgren, editor of The New York Times Magazine, participated in a pretty nifty Reddit Ask Me Anything installment. When one commenter asked him how long it takes to prepare each week’s Meh List, Lindgren wrote, “The Meh list never stops. The actual compilation of it is lickety split but the hunt for Meh is eternal.” He also admitted that two of his favorite magazine stories are Mark Jacobson’s “Night-Shifting for the Hip Fleet” and John Hersey’s “Hiroshima” [Reg. Req.].
Boltanski’s No Man’s Land
French installation artist of the forgotten, Christian Boltanski, presents a new exhibit in New York: a vast landscape of old clothes and biscuit tins entitled No Man's Land at the Park Avenue Armory. Image gallery at The Daily Beast.
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