Recommended Reading: On coming out as a gay children’s book author.
The Kids Are All Right
Brutalised Africans Made Glasgow
Amidst increasing calls to “memorialize slavery’s ties with Glasgow in a more sensitive way,” Scottish poet Kate Tough recently published a tribute poem, “People Made Glasgow.” Tough calls on the city to install a permanent slavery exhibit, a memorial garden, or new street names as well.
Only Humbled
From McSweeney’s: These opening remarks made by John Hodgman at a literary reading shortly after September 11, 2001. This study on the literature of 9/11 from A-J Aronstein at The Millions is a sobering, related piece.
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The Case of Portnoy v. Feldman
At the Jewish Daily Forward, Neal Pollack — he of The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature — takes on the retirement of his “contemporary,” Philip Roth.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Didion, Freud, Obreht
This week’s big book release is Joan Didion’s memoir Blue Nights. Also out is Esther Freud’s Lucky Break and new in paperback, Téa Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife (our review).
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Curiosities: The Governor and the Glove
Hitchens looks back at the Rushdie fatwa and its legacy of censorship.The Feltron 2008 Annual Report“The Governor and the Glove” – an encounter with BlagojovichJoseph O’Neill remembers Updike (via TEV)Ted Leo performs Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark.”The Paleolithic era of online news.TNR reviews Outliers: “It is an axiom of Malcolm Gladwell’s method that a perfect anecdote proves a fatuous rule.“
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