As a boy, Jorge Luis Borges carried a small dagger, a gift from his father, who told him to use it against his bullies to prove he was a man. For years thereafter, writes Michael Greeenberg in the New York Review of Books, Borges “prowled the obscure barrios of Buenos Aires, seeking the company of cuchilleros, knife fighters, who represented to him a form of authentic criollo nativism that he wished to know and absorb.”
Can anyone step up to compete with Amazon? Two contenders have just consolidated, as Zola, an independent website, buys Bookish, an online portal formed by Penguin, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette.
Kingsley Amis harbored such bitterness for his ex-wife Elizabeth Jane Howard that he refused her request to visit him on his death bed. Clearly, his son saw things differently. Here, Martin Amis pays surprisingly loving tribute to his late stepmother, who saved him from another life: “I was a semi-literate truant and waster," he says, "whose main interest was hanging around in betting shops.”
Forbes’s list of the 30 under 30, who are “building the media companies of tomorrow” contains many fresh-faced entrepreneurs and leaders of companies like Mashable, Circa, and other digest of content on the go, as well as Tavi Gevinson of Rookie and Rachel Rosenfelt of the New Inquiry.
At the Paris Review, Sadie Stein is leaving her post editing the magazine’s blog, The Daily, to become a contributing editor and writer, with Dan Piepenbring taking over blog-editing duties from her.
Rare criticism on the heels of a well-known fortnightly’s golden anniversary: “For 50 years,” writes Russell Jacoby in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the New York Review of Books “withdrew from the cultural bank while making few deposits.”
