Eleven years after publishing its first collection of the finest up-and-coming authors in Spanish, Granta magazine is releasing a second volume that brings together 25 writers aged under 35 and now at work on four continents. Read more
Year: 2021
The Strange Undeath of Middlebrow
It is odd that anyone still uses the word middlebrow. Like its complements lowbrow and highbrow, it reeks of antique beliefs, specifically the English notion that the brow ridges of pureblooded Anglo-Saxon gentlemen jut out and up in a most lordly fashion. Read more
New York bookstore figures out the perfect sideline: pickles.
Even in boomtimes it is hard to keep a bookstore afloat: the margins are razor thin and you’re in constant competition for bookbuyers with the largest monopoly in the universe (Am*zon). This is why a lot of stores—particularly newer ones—build higher-margin sidelines into their business models… like, say… beer! (Alena Jones recently wrote for Lit Hub about what bookselling means in the context of selling everything but books.)
Well, I’m here to tell you about a bookstore in New York City that has boldly—zestily, even—gone with pickles as its main sideline. Sweet Pickle Books, conveniently located in the pickle Mecca of the Lower East Side, is your one-stop destination for used books, old cassette tapes(?), and two-pound jars of pickles. Read more
In ‘Beeswing’ Richard Thompson Revisits a Big Life Just Shy of the Mainstream
Richard Thompson, a British musician who somehow avoided pop stardom throughout his career, has just written about his early days in a new memoir called Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice. Read more
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Marshall D. Sahlins, Groundbreaking Anthropologist, Dies at 90
His work focused on the way cultures shape, and are shaped by, individuals — a framework he demonstrated through his passionate political activism. Read more
Peter Manso, Biographer of Brando and Mailer, Dies at 80
His relationship with his subjects and critics could be tempestuous. His interview with Mayor Edward I. Koch for Playboy may have cost Koch the governorship. Read more