Paper Trail

Art Spiegelman talks about his banned book; Ottessa Moshfegh at New York Fashion Week


Ottessa Moshfegh. Photo: © Jake Belcher

Author Ottessa Moshfegh walked in the runway show for Maryam Nassir Zadeh at New York Fashion Week. Lauren Oyler reviewed Moshfegh’s last novel, Death in Her Hands, in the Apr/May 2020 issue. 

Vulture profiles Art Spiegelman, the Pulitzer winning cartoonist. The author’s masterwork, Maus, has recently been in the news after a Tennessee county school board removed the book from a middle-school curriculum after parents complained that some of the cartoon animals were nude or used profanity. The incident has since turned into a larger conversation about censorship and Holocaust rememberabce. As Spiegelman now describes himself, “I’ve become cannon fodder in a culture war.”   

Jeffrey Moyo, a journalist in Zimbabwe who writes for the New York Times, faces up to ten years in jail for allegedly providing fake press credentials. But the government suddenly closed their case against Moyo after a single witness badly undermined the prosecution’s argument. Angela Quintal, of the Committee to Protect Journalists, told the Times: “The state should never have proceeded to trial in the first place. We are hopeful that Jeffrey’s protracted nightmare will finally end.” 

A Harper’s Magazine posting for an assistant editor position received immediate and unanimous feedback on Twitter because the listed salary was $40,000 per year.  

The new issue of Mouse Magazine is out now, with writing by Lisa Borst, Joshua Craze, Jack Calder, and others. 

Matthew Gasda’s play Dimes Square has added more dates in February. The production features both professional and amatuer actors including critics Bijan Stephen and Christian Lorentzen. Part of the description reads, “The assembled scenesters could be the worst people in New York City or merely the latest not quite innocent revelers in a permanent pageant of seduction and betrayal.”