Gretchen Carlson granted her first interview since filing a sexual harassment lawsuit against Fox News head Roger Ailes. Carlson was unceremoniously let go in June, and while poor ratings have been cited by Fox as the reason for parting ways, the former host says ratings were never mentioned in the brief meeting before her dismissal. “It took 30 seconds, there was no ‘Thank you for your service of 11 years.'” New York's Gabriel Sherman asks, “Can the Murdochs Contain the Damage From the Ailes Investigation?” Judging from Sherman’s own investigation, the answer seems to be no. Other women have come forward with their own stories of harassment: A “former rising star” alleges that “Ailes approached her during a barbecue at Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy’s house in New Jersey while she was bouncing on a trampoline with children and said, ‘Are you wearing any panties? I wish you weren't.’”
Theresa May has been the Prime Minister of the UK for less than a day, and already Biteback Publishing has snapped up the rights to Theresa May: The Path to Power. The first female Prime Minister since Margaret Thatcher is apparently a “Vogue-reading, cookbook-devouring, kitten heel-wearing” everywoman who may have a paper-eating problem worthy of My Strange Addiction.
The National Endowment of the Arts announced the newest additions to its Big Read program, which include Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric, Alejandro Zambra’s Ways of Going Home, Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, Kelly Link’s Pretty Monsters, Louise Erdrich’s The Round House, Kevin Young’s Book of Hours, and Kao Kalia Yang's The Latehomecomer. In the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Yang recommends Ed Bok Lee’s Whorled as a book that has helped her to understand racial injustice. “It is a beautiful memory of our hurt, collective and individual, at the barrels of guns and in the words we spew, of America and the world’s long journey to each other, the falling apart so we can be together.”
In unnecessary movie remake news, the promotional image for the upcoming film adaptation of Stephen King’s It has arrived. The millennial It is a clear descendent of Tim Curry’s sewer-dwelling terror-clown, but there’s no word yet on what It will look like as a spider. In other Stephen King news, the author will be opening the 2016 Library of Congress National Book Festival this fall in Washington, DC.
In an interview with Man Booker Prize-winning author Marlon James, The Fader reveals that James used to design album covers for dancehall artist Sean Paul, the source of numerous early-2000s summer jams such as “Temperature” and “Baby Boy.” James and Paul attended the same high school. On meeting Paul and his Dutty Cup Crew, James said, “I remember knowing, right then, that he was the only one who was going to make it.”
Tonight: Rob Sheffield will read from his new book, On Bowie, at the Brooklyn bookstore Word.
