Since his death in 1950, George Orwell has grown more and more popular, so much so that his eponymous adjective is now widely used even by ideological enemies. So how did this state of affairs come about? In the new Intelligent Life, an offshoot of The Economist, Robert Butler delves into the story of how Orwell became an icon. Pair with: Vishwas Gaitonde on his visit to Orwell’s birthplace.
Blairian
Unrecommended Reading
"To the pathless wastes, into thin air, with no reviews, no best-seller lists, no college curricula, no National Book Awards or Pulitzer Prizes, no ads, no publicity, not even word of mouth to guide me!" For her new book The Shelf: From LEQ to LES, Phyllis Rose undertook the ultimate stunt in writing-about-reading: an unsorted shelf with no logic at all.
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McSweeney’s Column Contest
You have until 8/20 to enter the 4th Annual Column Contest at McSweeney's.
Trethewey’s Inaugural Reading
Natasha Trethewey will give her inaugural reading as the U.S. Poet Laureate tonight at the Library of Congress. The event is free and open to the public, and some of Trethewey’s work can be found here, here, and here.
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False Positive
At The New Yorker, Sarah Miller humorously learns why only positive book reviews might be a bad thing. "If St. Petersburg is the Little Engine That Could of city names, then the main character, Raskolnikov, is the Little Engine That Could of elderly pawnbroker murderers," she writes in her review of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment.
Tuesday New Release Day: White, Holt, Meyer
New this week: Nobel Laureate Patrick White's posthumously discovered novel, The Hanging Garden; Elliott Holt's debut You Are One of Them; and The Son by Philipp Meyer.
Patron Saint of Decency & Feminism
Fanny Trollope, Anthony’s mother, taught America a thing or two about decency and feminism: her scathing pen wrote books about the excesses of American society and its alienation of women. Over at Bloom, Cynthia Miller Coffel writes about this trailblazing woman who should be considered "the patron saint of middle aged women writers."