Patrice Hutton writes on Obama, Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, and politics at Ploughshares. You could also read Alex Engebretson’s thoughts on Robinson’s singular vision.
Political Lit
Labyrinths
Recommended recommendations: “Five books that are also labyrinths,” including Italo Calvino‘s The Castle of Crossed Destinies and Lily Hoang‘s Changing.
Shellacked Decorative Vegetables
Halloween might be over, but the season of freakishly large decorative gourds lives on. Here’s a fascinating essay from The Toast on how to raise enormous pumpkins–county fair, here we come.
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Remembering Denis Johnson
“He believed it a privilege and a shame that his race and nationality gave him the chance to come and go from lands where a guillotine blade seemed to dangle forever over the local citizens.” Denis Johnson‘s longtime Esquire editor Will Blythe pens a remembrance of the writer for The New York Times. See also: our own Sonya Chung‘s recommendation of Johnson’s celebrated short story collection Jesus’ Son to a friend some years back. “I know it will knock him out,” she wrote. “It does (of course).”
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Bond. Sixty Years of Bond.
Beth Carswell takes a look at sixty years’ worth of James Bond book designs. Which one is your favorite?
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Another “Mildred Pierce”
Are you a Mildred Pierce fan? James M. Cain’s recently discovered manuscript will be released next year by Hard Case Crime.
What to Dispense With
Say you’re the kind of person who never ends a sentence with a preposition. You’re studious about distinguishing between “its” and “it’s,” and you’re likely to judge a person who says “nauseous” when they should have said “nauseated.” But occasionally, if you’re being honest with yourself, you suspect that a lot of the grammar rules you follow are conditional or even arbitrary. Herewith, Steven Pinker offers ten rules you should break from time to time. (Related: Fiona Maazel wrote an essay for The Millions on good grammar.)