
Actually, here is the dumb book-adjacent discourse to waste your time on today.
It’s not even noon and we’ve basically cycled through two fruitless Twitter storms around putatively bookish topics. The first seems like a classic case of engagement farming (“How can you read fiction during a time of war [you escapist monster]?”), so ought to be truly ignored.* The second—which is a bit more alarming—is the NYT’s op-ed board’s vibe-driven essay about free speech and cancel culture, which posits a largely feelings-based equivalency between book banning and Twitter pile-ons; here is the money quote:
For all the tolerance and enlightenment that modern society claims, Americans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country: the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned.
Granted, the op-ed board attempts some nuance further along in the piece, but this is a pretty shocking upfront misreading of life in any free country, in which shaming and shunning seems fundamental to whatever people mean by the “marketplace of ideas.”
But here I am getting drawn in, when the whole point of this post is to lure you all to the blossoming outrage surrounding British singer Charli XCX’s t-shirt, which says: “They don’t build statues of critics.” Au contraire, Ms. XCX, they do! According to some diligent reply-guys, I now know there are statues of Northrup Frye and Roger Ebert. Take that fabulously rich and talented young woman!
Great work, everyone. Up next:
*I know, I have failed in doing just that. Maybe I am the real monster. (Timely photoshops by Katie Yee.)

Jonny Diamond
Jonny Diamond is the Editor in Chief of Literary Hub. He lives in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains with his wife and two sons, and is currently writing a cultural history of the axe for W.W. Norton. @JonnyDiamond, JonnyDiamond.me