In the New York Times Magazine, a conversation with John Waters, whose debut novel, Liarmouth: A Feel-Bad Romance will be published in May. Waters explains how things have changed since he was younger: “We used political incorrectness as a weapon against our enemies, but we made fun of ourselves first. The trigger-warning crowd does not make fun.”
The London Review of Books has published a collection of responses to the invasion of Ukraine. Among the twenty-eight writers represented are: Pankaj Mishra, writing about “global mimicry of the American way of war”; Jacqueline Rose discussing the dangers of moral victory and claims to innocence in battle; Thomas Meaney reflecting on the economic sanctions (“apparently drying up remittances to Kazakhs and denying grain to Egyptians is what heroism looks like on the Western side”); and Meehan Crist on the ignorance and “casual cultural supremacy” of commentators who imply that violent conflict is natural beyond “European” borders.
The Nation has a special issue out now on drugs, including stories on how the crackdown on illegal substances has destroyed communities, the mainstreaming—and big business—of psychedelic medicine, and legalization efforts.
The 2022 J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project Awards have been announced.
The editors of Jewish Currents have invited five writers to reflect on Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif,” the only short story she ever published, which has now been reissued in a standalone volume by Knopf. Read essays by Dionne Brand, Adania Shibli, Claire Shwartz, Lauren Michele Jackson, and Simone Browne on reading as revision, solving for race, intimate syntax, and more.
