Who’s ready for another Biden family memoir?
Because the president’s little sister is giving us one regardless
Books
Friday
Thursday
The Stepford Wives and today’s empty feminism
We must begrudgingly acknowledge what the author got right
Thursday
Waugh in Hollywood
Seventy-five years ago, Evelyn Waugh headed to Hollywood to sell Brideshead Revisited
Fit to print
Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took On a World at War by Deborah Cohen reviewed
Diversifying democracy
The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure by Yascha Mounk reviewed
Femmes fatales in fiction and life
American literature is intensely preoccupied with the beautiful female psychopath
A private life
Private Notebooks: 1914-1916 by Ludwig Wittgenstein, edited and translated by Marjorie Perloff, reviewed
Beautiful and damned
Astrid Sees All by Natalie Standiford reviewed
Dirty realists
The beauty of dirty realism is that it captures regular life in all its stupefying, and sometimes transcendent, malaise
Monday
Against Hope
Hope: A Literary History by Adam Potkay reviewed
Friday
Time for Jack Kerouac to hit the road
He and the Beats aren’t nearly as good as annoying young men imagine
Monday
Imagining Rimbaud
The more one knows about Rimbaud and literary criticism, the more one will enjoy the book’s subtler jibes
Sunday
A gay fandango
Joie de Vivre by Paul Bailey reviewed
Fall and decline
After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Époque through Revolution and War by Helen Rappaport reviewed
Our enemy’s enemy
Fugitives: A History of Nazi Mercenaries During the Cold War by Danny Orbach reviewed
For whom the bell tolls
Hemingway’s Widow: The Life and Legacy of Mary Welsh Hemingway by Timothy Christian reviewed
I’m a Latinx person of letters
The POC victim narrative is a systemic problem
Wednesday
P.J. O’Rourke, a conservative of enjoyment
The legendary satirist hearkened back to a day when the right knew how to smile
P.J. O’Rourke mastered the art of teasing
The late great satirist chose pleasant ribbing over contempt, and made us all laugh along the way
Sunday
We don’t need more literary magazines
Rather, we need better ones
