“On January 14, 2017, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus—America’s oldest and best circus, America’s last true touring circus—announced that it was closing, and six days later the country mourned, with an exit parade, a grand-finale funeral: the inauguration of Donald J. Trump.” Year-in-Reading alum Joshua Cohen, whose Book of Numbers spent seven months on our top-10 list back in 2015, and whose new novel Moving Kings made our most-anticipated list for the latter half of this year, reflects on the end of an era for The Point.
The Greatest Show on Earth
Brexit Blues
Recommended Reading: Jen Calleja offers a reading list to soothe your Brexit blues at The Quietus. “Like many people, I went through the five stages of Brexit – ‘oh well’, manic laughter, crying, rage, existential despair – in one day, and in the days that followed felt numb, nauseous, in doubt. But now it’s time to climb out of the mourning pit and work even harder than before at holding on to a European identity and keeping channels open to personal and literary dialogues with our European neighbours.”
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Tolstoy in Russia
Last year Russians wrestled over Tolstoy much as they did when he was alive. The New York Times documents Russian statesman Sergei V. Stepashin’s difficult journey to rehabilitate Tolstoy’s reputation.
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JJS on Seidel
“Seidel scared himself with poetry, and us too. How had he done it?” John Jeremiah Sullivan presented the Hadada Award to Frederick Seidel at The Paris Review’s Spring Revel last month. You can read the full text of his speech and three of Seidel’s poems. This seems to be a much better week for Sullivan because he also just won the James Beard Foundation’s MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award for his essay “I Placed a Jar in Tennessee.”
“We need a theory of jerks.”
“Everywhere you turn, are you surrounded by fools, by boring nonentities, by faceless masses and foes and suckers and, indeed, jerks?” If so–as this insightful if somewhat confidence-shattering piece at Aeon suggests–the jerk may be you.
Trash Collector
We’ve all heard stories about fans who root through the trash of Hollywood celebrities. But what about those rare birds who root through the trash of famous authors? Herewith, Adrienne LaFrance relates the story of Paul Moran, a Salem, MA resident who picked through John Updike’s garbage. It’s probably a good time to read our review of Adam Begley’s biography of Updike.
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