At the Intercept, Natasha Vargas-Cooper has a multipart interview with Jay Wilds, who figures prominently in Sarah Koenig’s twelve-episode documentary podcast, Serial, and who was a key witness in the case against Adnan Syed. (Syed was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend in 1999, but has maintained his innocence; Serial suggests he may be telling the truth and casts doubt on Wilds.) The Observer talks to Vargas-Cooper about her decision to do the interview.“I think [Wilds is] a really complicated guy and I think I’m dealing with somebody who has like been really traumatized. [This interview] has intensified and further armed the pro-Adnan people, which I feel like at this point anything would. But I think for people who are not as partisan it created a more fleshed out human being.”
Melville House has already ordered a reprint of its edition of The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture, which officially went on sale yesterday.The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture,The publisher has sold out of all 50,000 copies of its initial run of 50,000.
Gawker IDs Lena Dunham’s alleged rapist, in response to accusations that she fabricated the rape and the character who raped her.
Pankaj Mishra and Benjamin Moser wonder whether writers can still "make it new," as Ezra Pound famously suggested we must. "Literary modernism has culminated in a canon of a few great but inimitable texts," Mishra reflects. "Avant-garde painting, originally a mode of rebellion, now moves tamely in industrial capitalism’s circuits of production and consumption. The once potent notions of revolution, progress and future that inspired much artistic innovation have lost their imaginative appeal."
Four more staffers have left the depleted New Republic, including managing editor Linda Kinstler, deputy editor Amanda Silverman, assistant literary editor Becca Rothfeld, and reporter Yishai Schwartz.
