Paper Trail

An excerpt from Pola Oloixarac’s novel Mona; Aída Chávez joins The Nation as DC correspondent


Pola Oloixarac. Photo: Denise Giovanelli

Leo Robson reviews Sarah Moss’s new novel, Summerwater, for the New Yorker. The novel is something of a study of Brexit Britain, and follows characters in postindustrial northern towns. But, Robson notes, “the novel is powered not by the local tensions it depicts but by the existential conflict underpinning them. When we write about the behavior of a society, Moss seems to say, we are also talking about the workings of the individual mind; collective myths—nostalgia for a pre-industrial past and an unmixed populace, the dream of a sovereign future, some settled story about our present moment—are simply drives and fears writ large.”

Aída Chávez, who reports on Congress for The Intercept and was one of the first journalists to cover Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, will join The Nation as DC correspondent.

Melissa Gira Grant is live tweeting the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the Equality Act.

“Someone else remarked that it would’ve been great publicity for this year’s Basske-Wortz if the poet had vanished for good: prize ceremonies were an ideal and underutilized setting for a crime.” Literary Hub has published an excerpt from Pola Oloixarac’s novel Mona, which was translated from Spanish by Adam Morris.

Facebook is testing an integrated publishing platform, which would allow independent writers to build websites and newsletters, Axios reports. The New Republic’s Jacob Silverman writes about the emerging tendency for tech companies and venture capitalists journalists to treat journalists as “like any other digital influencer or content producer, following the money from platform to platform.” The profession, Silverman writes, “risks becoming an endless hustle, the constant accumulation of followers and efforts at self-monetization.”

Online at Granta, authors Jeremy Atherton Lin (Gay Bar) and Kevin Brazil (What Ever Happened to Queer Happiness?) discuss their books and reminisce about night life. “The lockdown put a moratorium on serendipity. There’s this Henry James passage on the lines of, a city’s excitement is the danger lurking around the corner, even if you never turn that corner. Now around-the-corner has been closed,” said Atherton Lin.

Next Tuesday at 7:30 PM EST, the Free Library of Philadelphia will host Viet Thanh Nguyen and Alexander Chee to talk about Nguyen’s new novel, The Committed.