Recommended Reading: A brief history of the gender-neutral pronoun “they,” from Shakespeare to Girls and The Argonauts.
Who Are They?
Justice and Prayer
“Dear publisher, I am sorry if I do so few of these stories justice. Someone else surely will. I don’t know what justice for a book is but I think I saw it as I prayed over this one.” Matthew Jakubowski reviews Diane Williams’ latest collection Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine at Minor Literature[s]. You could also read his reviews of Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi’s Fra Keeler and Margriet de Moor’s The Storm at The Millions.
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Irv Loathed NPR
Recommended Reading: A piece of new fiction by Joanthan Safran Foer! Go check out "Maybe It Was the Distance" over at The New Yorker. Here's a review of Foer's Tree of Codes by Kevin Nguyen for The Millions which calls the format of the book, "a wonderful experiment in what a book can be, and also home to a mediocre novel."
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The Beating of Rodney King, Take Two
Rodney King, possibly the nation's best-known victim of police brutality, will fight former Pennsylvania police officer Simon Aouad in a celebrity boxing match in Philadelphia on September 12. "I know some people will see the irony here," King said. I'm not sure irony's the word, but it's something alright.
Tuesday New Release Day: Smith; Campbell; Moore; Brooks; Marra; Ōe; Niffeneger
Out this week: M Train by Patti Smith; Mothers, Tell Your Daughters: Stories by Bonnie Jo Campbell; 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories edited by Lorrie Moore; The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks; The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra; Death by Water by Kenzaburō Ōe; and Ghostly: A Collection of Ghost Stories by Audrey Niffenegger. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-Half 2015 Book Preview.
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Jewish America
Saul Bellow on being Jewish in America, and Lorin Stein, in an interview, discusses contemporary Jewish writers.
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Ten Bloodiest Bedtime Stories
For those of you who ask, like Jacob Lambert, whether picture books are leading our children astray, the Independent posts ten of the bloodiest bedtime stories.
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The Man Was Hard on Himself
Hot on the heels of The New Yorker, The Paris Review is excerpting Calvino’s letters. In Monday’s entry, POSTERITY IS STUPID, the author writes the following: “Although I am small, ugly and dirty, I am highly ambitious and at the slightest flattery I immediately start to strut like a turkey.”
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