The GOP primaries kick off today with the Iowa caucus. To get a sense of the Republican candidates, check out Longform’s guide to the 2012 contenders, a recent New York Times profile of Mitt Romney, and a New Yorker piece on Newt Gingrich.
Norwegian police are on the hunt for forged documents allegedly belonging to writers Henrik Ibsen and Knut Hamsun after a Norwegian scriptwriter was arrested for falsely claiming to have discovered fragments of a lost Ibsen play. "He was very convincing," an Oslo antiquarian booksellers, told The Observer. "His story was that he was a collector of all kinds of stuff connected to the second world war— uniforms, medals etc—and that he had got in touch with the older Nazis living in Spain and Norway." The man accused of pulling the con, Geir Ove Kvalheim, will go on trial in April.
At least six major museums and universities have announced plans to start collecting materials from Occupy Wall Street, and NYU and Columbia are now offering classes on the movement.
Ruth Franklin is done with ordinary old New Year resolutions. Last year, she started making literary resolutions. At the New Republic, she tells you how well she did in 2011, and lists a few reading resolutions for 2012.
