“This inconvenient working-class revolution we are now witnessing has been accused of stupidity—I cursed it myself the day it happened—but the longer you look at it, you realize that in another sense it has the touch of genius, for it intuited the weaknesses of its enemies and effectively exploited them. The middle-class left so delights in being right! And so much of the disenfranchised working class has chosen to be fragrantly, shamelessly wrong.” Year in Reading alumna Zadie Smith shares her thoughts on Brexit.
The Brexit Diaries
Kafka in Myanmar
“On my manhood rests a tattooed / portrait of Mr. President. / My beloved found that out after we wed. / She was utterly gutted, / Inconsolable.” Poet Maung Saungkha may have to prove in a Myanmar courtroom that he doesn’t have a tattoo of the nation’s president on his genitals.
This Is Not Confessional Poetry
Over at the Bennington Review, Michael Dumanis interviews Year in Reading alumna Dorothea Lasky about persona poetry, the first-person “I,” and creativity. Pair with Gila Lyons’s Millions essay on creativity and madness.
●
●
Spy Fever
With the full trailer out for the upcoming James Bond release, Skyfall, I have to confess I’m totally obsessing over British spy stuff of late. Luckily there are some supplements to scratch that itch: Tina Rosenberg’s new story for The Atavist, D for Deception, about a real British spy writer who became a spy himself; Bee Wilson’s fascinating review of Ben MacIntyre’s outrageous but true investigation of WWII double agents, Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies; Alexander Cockburn’s recap of the time George Orwell supplied “a list of the names of persons on the left who he deemed security risks” to the IRD; the story of Ernest Hemingway’s lousy espionage; and the video Her Royal Majesty’s recent skydiving escapade with 007.
●
●
The Rights of Southern Writers
Recent estate sales, auctions, and rights deals concerning the legacy and works of William Faulkner are “raising complex questions about what happens to the works of great writers after they die,” writes Stefanie Cohen. “For their part, Faulkner’s heirs say they aim to both honor the writer’s work and raise funds.” (Bonus: the ongoing, public legal battle over rights to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.)
●
●
Brilliant Friends
“There has been a growth in the literary depiction of a particular type of friendship, one that has in the past found itself vulnerable to dilution and deflection by the ostensibly more powerful imperatives of heterosexuality and motherhood.” On literary female friendships, from Virginia Woolf to Elena Ferrante and Year in Reading alumna Zadie Smith.
●
●