TODAY: In 1957, United States Customs confiscates 520 copies of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems printed in England on the grounds of obscenity.
- Having already been combined with zombies and game theory, Jane Austen has encountered her worst pairing yet (with the alt-right). | The New York Times
- “Going through those notes was interesting, because they showed me a younger version of myself. That version was less interesting than I had hoped she was.” An interview with Joan Didion (conducted by Emma Roberts because sure, why not). | Belletrist
- “Trump might not be known for reading books, but he has always proved gifted at getting his name on every empty surface known to man.” On the “bewildering amount” of Trump-themed writing that has appeared since he announced his presidential bid. | MTV News
- Michelle Dean on the importance of writers not looking away (and the relatability of baby raccoon memes). | The New Republic
- “This is the best thing about poems. They get to be visual and flexible in a way prose can’t.” Tracy O’Neill interviews Morgan Parker. | Electric Literature
- In remembrance of legendary Beat Generation/San Francisco Renaissance poet Joanne Kyger. | City Lights
- How libraries and universities are working to improve digital literacy and combat fake news. | VICE
- “Books and letters would bring a sense of freedom to a place like this, where everything is so rigid and unjust. But they are forbidden.” Six persecuted Turkish writers share their experiences. | The Guardian
- Anna Journey on navigating metaphors, writing as a process of discovery, and inhabiting an “Ovidian myth set in a hip, ethically sourced taxidermy studio.” | Electric Literature
- In grief we turn unapologetically inward, toward what we have lost and with little regard for who and what is still left: On living with loss and Roland Barthes’s Mourning Diary. | Hazlitt
- “This truth I hold as self-evident: there is no such thing as freedom of speech. Each word we utter has a price.” Mitchell S. Jackson on the n-word. | The Author’s Guild
- God, she doesn’t play: A conversation between poet Ishion Hutchinson and novelist and essayist Teju Cole. | Work in Progress
- Amazon, everyone’s favorite mom-and-pop bookseller, has opened a fifth physical store in Chicago (stocking only books with an average rating of 4.5 stars or higher). | Business Insider
- For lack of any other pressing obligations, George R.R. Martin is opening a new film studio. | Rolling Stone
- On his second day of confirmation hearings, SCOTUS nominee Neil Gorsuch invoked David Foster Wallace, who “has quietly become a favorite of many archconservatives over the last decade.” | The New Republic
In which Peter Nowogrodzki shares a really big lunch with Jim Harrison · Art Spiegelman on Trump, despair, and the forgotten genius of Si Lewen · How a dictionary got into the marriage equality debate · Patty Yumi Cottrell doesn’t find writing therapeutic in any way · Presidential politics as reality TV and realist fiction · Introducing the ten 2017 Whiting Award winners (and a party report from the reception) · Pankaj Mishra on progress, popular history, and our bleak and divided global moment · If fiction changes the world, it’s going to be YA · On Get Out, Claudia Rankine, and the horror of black hypervisibility · In which we calculate how many books you will read before you die · Gabrielle Bellot on Derek Walcott, poet of the twilight and the Caribbean
The Best of Book Marks:
“A bath tub version of Moby-Dick”: TIME Takes a bite out of Jaws · “The simmering, underground power of teenage sexuality”: On Deborah Willis’ The Dark and Other Love Stories · Neil Gaiman’s American Gods as Wagnarian noir · In her Paste review of Dear Ijeawele, Shannon Houston says “we cannot have a feminist movement in 2017 without Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie” · The “troubled clan of misfits” that populate Mary Karr’s 1995 childhood memoir The Liar’s Club · A 1987 New York Times take on “the malicious glee” of Tom Wolfe and The Bonfire of the Vanities · Margaret Atwood’s NBCC Lifetime Achievement Award speech on the important work book critics do
