For the New Yorker, Andrew Marantz writes about the podcasts that have emerged in the wake of Chapo Trap House’s “near-monopoly on socialist podcasting,” with a focus on Matthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell’s Know Your Enemy. “Sitman and Adler-Bell are serious,” Marantz writes, “about the ‘know’ part of their title. They seem more ambivalent about the ‘enemy’ part. It’s not that they’re squishy about their politics: they have discussed at length what their socialist utopia would look like, and their only sustained disagreement during the 2020 primaries came in the form of Sitman, a die-hard Bernie Sanders fan, gently ribbing Adler-Bell for even entertaining the idea of supporting Elizabeth Warren. Their hesitancy has more to do with temperament.”
The longlist for the 2021 Booker Prize has been announced. Among the thirteen nominees are Rachel Cusk, Anuk Arudpragasam, Kazuo Ishiguro, Patricia Lockwood, and Nadifa Mohamed.
For The Nation, Indigo Olivier examines how media unions are fighting non-disclosure agreements in the workplace, particularly in cases of harassment or discrimination. In May, members of the Daily Beast union finalized a contract that eliminates NDAs in workplace harassment cases. The Daily Beast union’s Unit Chair Kate Briquelet told the Nation, “It gets in the way of reporting on the truth and holding powerful people accountable. . . The changes that the union is creating affect everybody, and make it a better newsroom for all of us, regardless of whether you’re a union member.
In an interview for BOMB with Rob Goyanes, Brian Evenson discusses his latest story collection, Song for the Unraveling of the World. They talk about “denarration,” declarative sentences, and Evenson’s skepticism of character development: “So much fiction has this idea: there’s a character, they confront something, they change, and then they’re different people. If you’re around humans for long enough, you realize that that’s the exception rather than the rule.”
The Atlantic has launched a new section called “America in Person,” which will be “dedicated to the stories that explain who we are.”
The Community of Literary Magazines and Presses, an organization of hundreds of small-press publishers, asked its members to recommend books to read for disability pride month. The reading list features poetry, fiction, nonfiction, literary magazines, and anthologies from Coach House Books, Red Hen Press, Milkweed Editions, and more.
