At The Nation, Kyle Paoletta considers the history of the New York Times Book Review and ponders its future. Now that editor Pamela Paul has moved to the paper’s op-ed desk, questions linger about what direction the Book Review will take: “Will the Times recommit to recommendations and reviews that double as ready-made blurbs in an effort to win over an audience that might not actually be interested in reading about books?” Paoletta asks. “Or will it publish the kind of criticism that appeals to readers who don’t require an approaching book club deadline to put down their phone?”
At Publishers Weekly, Steph Buschardt profiles Ada Calhoun. Her latest book, Also a Poet, began as an attempt to finish a biography of Frank O’Hara started long ago by the author’s father, the critic Peter Schjeldahl. But as Calhoun—the author of three previous books (including St. Marks Is Dead) and also a ghostwriter—delved further into the project, the book became something quite different: not just a portrait of O’Hara, but also a reflection on her sometimes fraught relationship with her father and her own development as a writer.
Flatiron Books has purchased Erased by Anna Malaika Tubbs, author of The Three Mothers. According to the publisher, the new book is “an examination of and reckoning with the history of patriarchy in America.”
Caryn James profiles the novelist and translator Jhumpa Lahiri on the occasion of her new essay collection, Translating Myself and Others. “Many essays in the book were written in English, a few translated from Italian and one originally composed in a hybrid of both.”
Tonight on Zoom, at 7pm Eastern time, McNally Jackson bookstore will host a discussion of You Have Not Yet Been Defeated, a collection of writings by Alaa Abd el-Fattah, a longtime political prisoner in Egypt. Participants in the event include filmmaker Sanaa Seif, author Molly Crabapple (Drawing Blood), journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous, and actor and writer Rosaline Elbay.