The Believer Logger interviews David Bezmozgis, whose female characters, he says—“ex-Soviet or Russian-Jewish women”—are “tougher” and “more pragmatic” than the men “because they are obliged to be. They have all the female responsibilities and all the male responsibilities.”
The Los Angeles Register, a daily paper that was launched in April, has stopped publication, the New York Times reports. Aaron Kushner founded the Register with the intention to offer local news and a “very different political perspective”—meaning a conservative one. “On a fiscal basis, we very much believe in free markets and on the personal liberties side,” Kushner said last December. “We believe firmly that people should be able to live their lives.” The paper’s problem, as Kushner explained it in a letter on Monday, was that it couldn’t find enough readers.
The French press—the industry, not the coffee maker—is in trouble, says Nieman Reports, especially the forty-one-year-old paper Libération (founded by Sartre). Circulation has dropped, and the website has fewer than 10,000 paid subscribers.
Hilary Mantel has been undaunted by the negative reaction of some people to a recently published story of hers, which describes an assassin preparing to kill Margaret Thatcher. “Some of these people are not what you’d call great intellects,” she told the Wall Street Journal. “Of course they don’t bother to read the story.”
The Atlantic Wire, which was separated from the Atlantic a year ago, is getting reintegrated into the magazine’s regular website.
Next month, Vintage will release nine of Gabriel García Márquez’s books in digital editions.
Joan Didion is to be inducted into the California Hall of Fame.