For the New Republic, Alex Shephard considers the possibility that Substack will repopularize serialized fiction, and finds it “highly unlikely.” Novelist Salman Rushdie is the latest high-profile writer to join the platform, but as Shephard notes, the author of Midnight’s Children seems more intent on using it as a blog—another supposedly outdated but resilient technology. The speculation about how books will change with the times is well-worn: “For years, people have been predicting that the internet would radically upend the future of literature and yet, stubbornly, literature has refused to change.”
At Gawker, Charlotte Shane writes about Texas’s ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, which went into effect this week. Shane emphasizes a key distinction: “When the state passes laws around abortion, it is intentionally trying to make abortion dangerous. I want to say it again: lawmakers are not keeping doctors from making an inherently dangerous act safe, they are actively trying to turn a safe procedure into a dangerous one.”
Anitra Budd, the new publisher of Coffee House Press, talks with the Minneapolis Star Tribune about her plans for the house.
Lauren Stroh writes about Hurricane Ida’s impact on New Orleans for n+1: “I know what will come now. There is the endless insurance battle, there will be fraud and embezzlement and scams, there will not be enough building materials or labor to repair all the damage at once, and those with the least resources and biggest needs will suffer the most.” For more on the subject, read Elias Rodriques in our Fall 2020 issue on Andy Horowitz’s study of how decisions made at the state level made New Orleans vulnerable to storms.
In the forthcoming issue of Jewish Currents: Hannah Black on Black-Palestinian solidarity; Vicky Osterweil on the limitations of Sarah Schulman’s history of ACT UP; Claire Schwartz on George W. Bush’s paintings and the aesthetics of empire; Nathan Goldman reviews Joshua Cohen’s The Netanyahus, and more.