“The world we are living in… we have to make it over” : An interview with James Baldwin
It’s been a week—a couple of weeks—where James Baldwin’s analyses of race in America seem more relevant than ever. In December 1961, in the midst of the civil rights movement, Studs… Read more »
Newly discovered Chandler work is basically the least Chandler-esque thing ever
There are few greater gulfs than the one between the realities of daily life for young, poor, and not-yet-famous writers and the hysterical gaiety they pump into the works of… Read more »
Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s letters go to Harry Ransom Center
Though Gabriel García Márquez once said that writers should destroy all their drafts, so that, like magicians, they wouldn’t give away how the trick was done, it turns out that… Read more »
The National Archivist gets superpowers
David Ferriero, 10th Archivist of the United States, is on the verge of getting a crucial new power. And it’s not the power to say snarky things about Bigfoot to… Read more »
Plagiarism! It’s not just for Americans anymore
France has long been the nation to whom we callow Americans look for probity in intellectual matters and laxity in sexual ones. Their presidents always have at least one current… Read more »
Ex Libris is Latin for “hands off!” A history of the bookplate
Remember the bookplate? If you were even a vaguely bookish child, you were probably given a personalized bookplate by an aunt at some point. Perhaps it had a cat on… Read more »
Throw a turnip at it: Amazon drones taken down the British way
Amazon has listed a job posting for a drone pilot in its Cambridge, UK location, and the reaction to the news by Terry Holloway, managing director of the Cambridge Aero… Read more »
Play, death, and mayhem: a new translation of the Grimms Fairy Tales
It isn’t news that fairy tales are full of blood and gore and other materials usually considered not fit for children. Whole movie franchises and TV series and Broadway musicals… Read more »
Surprise winner of the Giller Prize tweets appropriately
When Sean Michaels, debut author, learned that he’d won the Scotiabank Giller Prize for his novel Us Conductors, about the life and times of Lev Termen, inventor of the theremin,… Read more »
California passes first state-level open access law
There was one happy moment of bipartisan achievement this fall, before the Republicans swept the Senate: on September 26th, a bill co-written by Assemblyman Brian Nestande (R–Palm Desert) and Assemblyman… Read more »