The Fales Library & Special Collections at NYU, known for its unique materials on Riot Grrrl and the Downtown New York scene, has acquired Chris Kraus’s papers, including her personal diaries—the source material for novels that ingeniously combined theory, fiction, and autobiography—and her correspondence as founding editor of Semiotext(e)’s Native Agents imprint, as well as film and video footage from her time as a filmmaker in New York in the 1980s and ‘90s. “Dear Dick,” Kraus wrote, in her groundbreaking 1997 epistolary novel I Love Dick, “I guess in a sense I’ve killed you. You’ve become Dear Diary.” For readers, it seemed more than worth the sacrifice—and now we might get a chance to see just how it was done.
Author and economic analyst Doug Henwood has responded to Katha Pollitt’s piece in The Nation on his book My Turn: Hillary Clinton Targets the Presidency, noting an unwillingness on the part of Clinton’s supporters to engage with her actual record. There’s a nice Allen Ginsberg reference in there, too.
Like the rest of us, Jonathan Sturgeon of Flavorwire has been paying attention lately to the public reading habits of our political and business leaders. And he’s drawn a few helpful conclusions, not least this one: “The urge to review books goes unsatisfied even when your every material and altruistic need is met.”
Meanwhile, for the old-fashioned among you who still long to read anonymously and in private, it will soon be possible to get more of your news on the dark web: ProPublica is apparently the first major media organization to offer an untraceable version of itself, via the Tor network.
Kelly Luce offers a treat at Electric Literature: One of the Lucia Berlin stories not included in A Manual for Cleaning Women.
