“You know, it’s dangerous to focus on one person as a way of talking about a big system. But I think Kissinger reveals the system. He’s not singularly responsible for the system—if we expunge Kissinger from history, we still wouldn’t have a Virtuous Republic—but he illuminates it like nobody else.” Greg Grandin discusses his recent release, Kissinger’s Shadow: The Long Reach of America’s Most Controversial Statesman, at The New Republic.
Revealing the System
The Ambitions of Oscar Wilde
“I won’t be a dried-up Oxford don, anyhow. I’ll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I’ll be famous, and if not famous, I’ll be notorious.” –Oscar Wilde on rejecting a career as a classics scholar. (via Book Bench)
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Longlist Released for the Guardian First Book Award
The Guardian picked its longlist for the 15th annual First Book Award, and it features selections from both NoViolet Bulawayo and Donal Ryan – two authors named to this year’s Booker Longlist as well.
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Not Ideal
“The most unfortunate / Thing about history / Is not pornos. No, it is how Americans / (And we were talking about men but may I take this opportunity / To be more inclusive, because inclusivity is in!) were once better than they are at present.” In which an imagined David Brooks writes a sestina about misogyny. Here’s a Millions piece in which the real-life Brooks is thought of not as a pariah, but as a harbinger of hope.
What Knoll Knows
Jessica Knoll shares the survival story that informed her novel, Luckiest Girl Alive.
Temper That Ego. You Need Luck As Well.
A few weeks ago, Benjamin Hale wrote an article for us about the trivialities and happenstance associated with publishing prizes. His point was that legacy was more important than short-lived fame. In a way, his piece is nicely supplemented by Tom Bissell’s essay on the luck and chance necessary to attain literary success.
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