At n+1, Nicholas Dames writes about a handful of books based in the 1970s, among them Rachel Kushner’s The Flamethrowers, Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland, Norman Rush’s Subtle Bodies, and Darcey Steinke’s Sister Golden Hair. “Here is the territory the novels evoke: a mythic late summer, spacious, unsupervised, a little druggy, a little restless, hedged only by the feeling that everything is about to end,” Dames explains. The nostalgia is intense. But “what if one could imagine a nostalgia that didn’t idealize, that in fact celebrated a past moment’s stubborn resistance to idealization, that coexisted with anhedonia? The twist of these novels . . . is that they aren’t yearning for any belle epoque — but they yearn nonetheless.”
Nieman Journalism Labs pokes fun at Buzzfeed by suggesting that they’ll hire a public editor—like the New York Times' Margaret Sullivan—in 2015.
Layoffs at the New York Times that were planned in October will begin being announced to staffers today. Most people let go will receive two weeks of pay, but a few who began working before 1994 will receive a salary for fifteen weeks.
Newsweek, on the other hand, is hiring—the magazine just brought on seven people to the editorial staff.
And the New Yorker has hired Kathryn Schulz, who’s been New York Magazine’s book critic since 2012. She'll write book reviews for the magazine and occasional web pieces.
