The New York Times has collected the editorials of the hundreds of newspapers across the country criticizing Trump’s attacks on the press and remind readers of the value of journalism. “Insisting that truths you don’t like are ‘fake news’ is dangerous to the lifeblood of democracy,” they write. “And calling journalists the ‘enemy of the people’ is dangerous, period.” Participating newspapers include the Topeka Capital-Journal, one of the few publications to endorse Trump in 2016.
The Dayton Literary Peace Prize finalists have been announced. Nominees include Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, Jenny Erpenbeck’s Go, Went, Gone, Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s We Were Eight Years in Power. Winners will be announced in October.
Vogue’s Jason Horowitz reports from the Italian set of HBO’s My Brilliant Friend, based on Elena Ferrante’s best-seller.
At Poets & Writers, Michael Taeckens talks to Wall Street Journal book critic Sam Sacks about negative reviews, book blurbs, and the power of criticism. “Nothing can take the place of a direct encounter with a book,” he said. “But if criticism doesn’t lead me to change my own judgment, it wonderfully broadens my understanding and appreciation of what a writer is doing.”
Look Alive Out There author Sloane Crosley reflects on the ways book display has become a lifestyle choice and explains why she doesn’t have any bookshelves in her apartment (instead, Crosley stores her books on the decorative moldings in her apartment). “Aesthetics in literature are important, but literature as aesthetics makes me nervous,” she writes. “When did a candle-topped pyramid of paperbacks become a symbol of depth? If you line up your novels in rainbow order but don’t Instagram them, were they ever really there?”
