Jill Soloway is starting their own imprint, Topple Books, with Amazon publishing. Soloway says of the new venture: “We live in a complicated, messy world where every day we have to proactively re-center our own experiences by challenging privilege. . . . With Topple Books, we’re looking for those undeniably compelling essential voices so often not heard.”
According to Ryan Holiday’s new book, Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue, Thiel considered illegal actions such as bribery, hacking, and theft against Gawker Media after Valleywag claimed Thiel was gay in a 2007 post. Holiday quotes Thiel saying, “There are things that were very tempting, an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Retributive justice. . . . But I think those would have ultimately been self-defeating. That’s where you just become that which you hate.” Thiel ended up backing Hulk Hogan in a successful lawsuit that led to Gawker shutting down and Gawker Media’s founder Nick Denton declaring bankruptcy.
Two years after Harper Lee’s death at the age of eighty-nine, her will has been unsealed. But, as the New York Times reports, questions about Lee remain unanswered, especially concerning her decision to publish a follow-up to To Kill A Mockingbird in 2015. That sequel, Go Set a Watchman, was the best-selling book of the year, but fans are divided about whether she intended to release the book or was taken advantage of by her representatives.
Quinn Norton, the technology writer who was hired to be a New York Times columnist, then quickly fired because of controversial tweets and her online friendship with a neo-Nazi, tells her side of the story at The Atlantic. According to Norton, it wasn’t her real self, but an online “doppelgänger” that caused the online outrage that led to her termination—out of context tweets, mainly. Of her friendship with Andrew Auernheimer (known online as “weev”), a webmaster for the anti-Semitic site The Daily Stormer, Norton writes, “weev is just one of many terrible people I’ve cared for in my life. I don’t support what my terrible friend believes or does. But I strongly advocate for people with a good sense of themselves and their values to engage with their terrible friends, coworkers, and relatives, to lovingly confront them for as long as it takes, and it would be wrong to not do so myself.”
Tonight at the Brooklyn Public Library, David Mamet presents his new book, Chicago: A Novel.