Some noteworthy reads from the last week:
“The Mainly True Tale of the Writer and the Spy,” Laura Spence-Ash
“Several years later, after he had returned from Germany and was studying at Columbia University, he was in the library and picked up the most recent copy of Harper’s Magazine. Pleased to see a story by Kay in the issue, he turned to the story and was shocked when, before the end of the first page, he recognized himself as Rod Murray, the main character.”
“The Dialectic of Love and Authority,” George Scialabba
“If irony alerts had been invented before 1977, they might have saved Christopher Lasch a lot of grief.”
“When Popular Fiction Isn’t Popular: Genre, Literary, and the Myths of Popularity,” Lincoln Michel
“What I’d like to focus on is the oddly persistent myth that genre fiction is “popular fiction” and that literary fiction is pointless and obscure. Or, as Jennifer Weiner regularly argues, that book critics and literary awards overlook the kind of fiction that real readers actually like.”
“What if, instead of transformation or fire or constant reinvention, we just dig a home and make sure it’s warm and private and welcoming? What then?”
“The New ‘Horror Victorianorum,’” Michael J. Lewis
“So persuasively did Strachey make his case that no one thought it necessary to repeat the exercise. If in truth he made no case at all, except by implication, the tragic fact of the war was evidence enough that the Victorian age had failed.”