Hillbilly Elegy author, former venture capitalist, and Ohio senator J. D. Vance is Trump’s running mate. We’re revisiting Frank Guan’s piece in the Feb/March 2018 issue of Bookforum about Elizabeth Catte’s What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia: “Though the referent of the accusatory ‘you’ in the title is left intentionally vague, it clearly points to J. D. Vance. Many pages are given over to enumerating the ways the region doesn’t conform to Vance’s sensational portrait (not all Appalachians live below the poverty line, and certainly not all coal miners; true, Appalachians are mostly white, but what population growth there is comes primarily from blacks and Hispanics), and the book’s central section is devoted to situating Vance within a long tradition of those eager to blame Appalachia’s woes on anyone but the rich.”
The New York Public Library is celebrating the centenary of James Baldwin’s birth with new exhibitions, a walking tour, and a slew of free events, film screenings, and workshops. James Baldwin: Mountain to Fire is on view now at the Stephen A. Schwarzman building, and includes early draft pages of Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, and The Fire Next Time. The opening reception of the exhibition JIMMY! God’s Black Revolutionary Mouth will be at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture on August 2, Baldwin’s birthday.
Graywolf Press has acquired two new nonfiction books by novelist and critic Brandon Taylor. The first book “will explain certain cultural trends—from autofiction to sprawling dramas to the vogue for speculative fiction—with the aim of articulating a new vision of ethics and morality in fiction,” and the second will be a craft book. Unnamed Press has also announced that Taylor, with Allison Miriam Woodnutt (née Smith), will oversee a new classics imprint called Smith & Taylor.
“I was an acquired taste, though even I hadn’t quite acquired a taste for myself.” Andrew Martin has a new story “Lovefool,” in the August issue of Harper’s.