In accordance with authorial fiat

From EW, an interview with David Sedaris on When You Are Engulfed in Flames (and here's an exhaustive guide — for would-be writers and readers alike — to years of autobiography overload). Can a Platonic relationship turn passionate? And if it could, would you want it to? As with century-old debates between suffragettes and abolitionists, the debate has veered toward which disadvantaged group has suffered more. From The Politico, a look at how Drudge keeps campaigns guessing. From Harper's, an interview with Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power; and readers have heard more than a little about that incomplete and unpublished novel, once at risk of being burned in accordance with authorial fiat but now to be published sometime hence as Vladimir Nabokov’s final work, The Original of Laura: Dying is Fun. The epigram on Walter Benjamin's memorial in Portbou, Catalonia, leads Les Back to reflect on the fate of the African migrants found dead on the coasts of Spain today. A review of Assisted Loving: True Tales of Double Dating With My Dad by Bob Morris. More on Nixonland by Rick Perlstein (and an excerpt at Bookforum). A look at how college alumni magazines struggle to compete with Facebook. From PopMatters, enjoying popular culture is necessarily a social experience; hype supplies the ground rules.