Politico reports that the Times op-ed by an anonymous Trump administration official has “raised a host of ethical and journalistic questions many have never considered before, including whether Times news reporters—who work independent of the editorial department, which published the op-ed—should now set about determining the identity of an anonymous Times opinion writer.”
Newtown: An American Tragedy author Matthew Lysiak is working on a book about Drudge Report founder Matt Drudge. The book will be published by Benbella Books next year.
Jonathan Lethem talks to Vulture about the 2016 election, writing as a coping mechanism, and his new book, The Feral Detective. “In a funny way, I had a better 2017 than a lot of people,” Lethem said of the process of writing his book, which takes place during Trump’s inauguration. “It kept me relatively chipper during the brutal year, because I was pretending it was only happening to Phoebe and not to me. Then, on the day I finished the book, I remember I turned the news back on and realized: Now I have to do this without the armor of the book. Oh, fuck.”
At the New York Times, Joyce Maynard reflects on the reception of her memoir about her relationship with J.D. Salinger, At Home in the World, and its connection to the #MeToo movement. “Though I believe that if the book I wrote 20 years ago were published today it would be received differently, it does not appear that enlightenment concerning the abuses of men in power extends retroactively to women who chose to speak long ago, and were shamed and humiliated for doing so. As recently as last fall — on the occasion of my having published a memoir about the death of my second husband, a book in which Salinger never appears — I was referred to as ‘the queen of oversharing,’” she recalls. “What does it say about us that a woman who speaks the truth of her experience should be dismissed for telling more than the world feels comfortable hearing?”
“The death of The Voice isn’t just about the end of a newspaper,” writes former columnist Tricia Romano. “ To some of us at least, it’s about the end of New York as a cultural and political center, as the place that the world turned to for art, for music, for leadership in new and uncomfortable ideas, often perceived by the mainstream to be dangerous or weird.”
The Guardian takes a look at the archives of the Man Booker prize, which have been put online in honor of its fiftieth anniversary. Highlights include 1969 and 1970 judge Rebecca West’s disdain for, among others, Kingsley Amis (“curiously disappointing”) and John le Carré (for writing “according to formula”), as well as details of the coin toss that awarded the 1976 prize to David Storey for Saville.