In her memoir 1974, Francine Prose “presents a nuanced account of the cultural crosscurrents that shuttled her between the certainties of the Fifties mores she grew up with and the sexual ethos of the late Sixties and early Seventies.” —Regina Marler go.nybooks.com/3B1vNvv

🇮🇹 Alessandro Giuli, director of Rome's Maxxi Museum, is Italy's new culture minister, replacing Gennaro Sangiuliano, who left after a melodramatic scandaletto. I interviewed both for this tour d'horizon of culture under PM Georgia Meloni. The New York Review of Books nybooks.com/articles/2024/…

“The Democrats in Chicago were singing a redemption song. It had three parts: valediction, malediction, and benediction. They managed most of the time to harmonize them without too much dissonance. This was no mean feat.” —Fintan O'Toole go.nybooks.com/3Z7wr4S

“Victor LaValle’s novels are not only interested in monsters but are monsters themselves: defying easy categorization, uncannily both one thing and another, and therefore unsettling.” —Rumaan Alam go.nybooks.com/3Tm957N

Kamala’s Moment nybooks.com/articles/2024/… via The New York Review of Books A lovely essay on Kamala Harris in historical context of American politics.

Forrest Gander on flamingo-watching in Rajasthan go.nybooks.com/3MD9orb

Lynn Hunt on Fareed Zakaria go.nybooks.com/3z8BhnP

Jed Perl on Jenny Holzer and the specter of spectacle in art go.nybooks.com/3MwMMIS

Andrew Katzenstein on the saxophonist Joe Henderson go.nybooks.com/4e83ZE0

“Screwball comedy, like film noir, is a category invented by critics; there’s little evidence that Hollywood filmmakers self-consciously made screwball comedies the way they made, say, westerns or musicals.” —Andrew Katzenstein go.nybooks.com/3MzvWZF

“The reason that the government wouldn’t release the full results, Machado said, was obvious: they didn’t match Amoroso’s numbers. And the González campaign could prove it, because they had the actas.” —William Neuman on Venezuela’s election go.nybooks.com/4cUweW0

In Fareed Zakaria’s account of the Industrial Revolution, as in his “retelling of the Dutch, English, and French revolutions, slavery and colonialism hardly figure.” —Lynn Hunt go.nybooks.com/4gcyZ7T

Dynamite piece, despite not mentioning the "Jazz Fusion" hat "Power to the People" LP bundle.

“Before the 2003 war, it was beyond Saddam’s imagination that the CIA might not have understood that his WMD programs and stockpiles were defunct, leading him to misread Western leaders’ expressions of anxiety about them.” —Charlie Savage go.nybooks.com/3XhAyZv

“Here they were—bizarre, gorgeous birds, a whole society chattering, posing, flirting, grooming themselves, cleaning one another, moving with the fine syncopation of flamenco dancers.” —Forrest Gander on flamingos go.nybooks.com/4giFaHI

The novelist and artist Rikki Ducornet, writes Marina Warner, “is a masterly irrealist who summons other worlds, both delightful and terrible.” go.nybooks.com/4dPb8cI

"The tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson was at once a vessel of tradition and a Romantic individualist, a consummate professional in an art form that lionized rebels." Reviewed by Andrew Katzenstein via The New York Review of Books nybooks.com/online/2024/09…

I got to interview Andrew about screwball comedies, the deadlift essay, and why writing isn't a lonesome activity nybooks.com/online/2024/09…

“I suspect a lot of writers develop their style to offset qualities they otherwise find lacking in themselves.” —Andrew Katzenstein, interviewed by Drake Motel go.nybooks.com/3XbGa7A

In her review of Creation Lake, Anahid Nersessian argues that there is a distance between the author and the protagonist: “Rachel Kushner doesn’t share Sadie’s desire to reduce Bruno’s political ideas to his personal tragedy. For her, ideas are no less real than feelings,