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The Swedish Academy defends Peter Handke's Nobel win; Naomi Wolf's book has been cancelled

Naomi Wolf

The Swedish Academy is defending its choice to award Peter Handke the Nobel Prize in Literature. Handke, who Serbian-American novelist Aleksander Hemon has called “the Bob Dylan of genocide apologists,” has drawn widespread criticism for denying Serb atoricties and for attending the funeral of Slobodan Milošević. More than 39,00 people have signed a petition asking the Academy to revoke the prize. Rebecka Kärde, a member of the Nobel committee, wrote in the Sweidsh newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, “When we give the award to Handke, we argue that the task of literature is other than to confirm and reproduce what society’s central view believes is morally right.”

Naomi Wolf’s book Outrages has been cancelled for US publication by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Promoting the book on the BBC in May, Wolf was confronted with a key error in the text.

At Literary Hub, David Ulin considers the countercultural effect Peanuts had on him, positing Linus as a boy philosopher: “What does it mean to speak for yourself? What does it mean to feel that pull? I began to ask these questions when I first encountered Linus’s fervent charge.”

At Esquire, Kate Storey presents a behind-the-scenes look at what happened after Bryan Goldberg bought Gawker in bankruptcy court last year, detailing his failed efforts to rebrand and relaunch the site.

Friday at 192 Books in Manhattan, Sarah Boxer presents a slideshow and talk about her “psycho comics,” In the Floyd Archives and Mother May I?.