The Golden Notebook, published almost 60 years ago now, gets to the heart of almost everything (depressingly, still) going on right now. “Lessing — like Anna — is unafraid to dirty her hands in the quest for truth. She might write with an acid touch but she doesn’t keep an Olympian distance from new causes or passionate affairs.” – The New York Times
Tag: 08.15.20
The Many Hatreds Of Horror Master H.P. Lovecraft
Lovecraft was clearly racist and clearly an anti-Semite – and guess what? He also thought the Irish were inferior. “Such prejudices weren’t simply background colour. They are front and centre of many of his most iconic tales.” (Which is why a new series would make him so mad.) – Irish Times
Writing With Radical Ordinariness
Emphasis on that radical, please, when you’re talking about author Carol Shields. – The New York Times
Think School Testing Is A Mess In The US? Take A Look At How The UK Shafted Students In The Pandemic
This is not to excuse the United States’ patchwork of school tests, the weirdness (and inequity) of the ACT or SAT, but … wow. “The coronavirus pandemic means exams were canceled and replaced with teacher assessments and algorithms. It has created chaos.” – Wired
Congress Adjourns With No Help For Live Music Venues (Or Anyone At All)
That likely condemns a lot of venues to closure. “‘It’s shocking that they don’t just stay until they figure it out,’ says Audrey Fix Schaefer of the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA).” Small music venues and theatres are truly at dire risk. – Variety
Leon Wieseltier, Chastened, Is Starting A New Magazine After All
A literal éminence grise (his hair went white decades ago) best known for editing the books-and-culture pages of The New Republic for 32 years, Wieseltier was about to launch a journal funded by Laurene Powell Jobs and called Idea when, in 2017, a slew of #MeToo allegations (none of which he denied) led both the magazine and Wieseltier to be canceled. Now he’s back, with a new quarterly called Liberties (420 pages of text, no images, no ads) about “the rehabilitation of liberalism” — and, perhaps, of the man himself. – Air Mail