Bob Dylan has finally responded to his Nobel Prize win, but has not yet committed to attending the award ceremony. In an interview with The Telegraph, the songwriter said he’ll receive his prize in person “if it’s at all possible.”
The Turkish government shut down fifteen news organizations this weekend, continuing its crackdown on independent media after a failed coup last summer.
In testimony last Friday, founder and owner of Rolling Stone Jann Wenner said that he still stands by most of the now-retracted “A Rape on Campus” article, and blamed “Jackie” for the controversy over the story, saying “there was nothing a journalist could do ‘if someone is really determined to commit a fraud.’” Wenner also apologized to plaintiff Nicole Aramo, the University of Virginia administrator who is suing over her portrayal in the article: “I’m very, very sorry. . . . Believe me, I’ve suffered as much as you have.”
After seventeen years in the borough, Barnes & Noble will close this year, leaving the Bronx with no bookstores. Andrew Boryga, who grew up in Bedford Park, reminisces about his family’s weekly outings to the store
when he was young: “I was already beginning to take the idea of becoming a writer seriously, and Barnes & Noble was one of the few places where I could find peace and quiet among kids who looked like me, spoke like me, and enjoyed reading like me.” Boryga hopes that the bookstore’s closure will inspire independent booksellers to open shops in the area.
The Rumpus talks to J. D. Vance, whose book Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis examines the declining steel-working community of Middletown, Ohio.
On the eve of his ninetieth birthday, John Berger talks with the Guardian: “If I am a storyteller it’s because I listen.”
