At the New Republic Jennifer Wilson looks at Sometimes You Have to Lie, a biography of Louise Fitzhugh, the author of Harriet the Spy. As Wilson notes, Fitzhugh was a lesbian children’s-book author in the era of the McCarthy hearings, conformity, and homophobia. She hung out with Djuna Barnes and Lorraine Hansberry and refused to do interviews, readings, or publicity. Her second novel, about a lesbian relationship, was quietly shelved.
The winners of the Whiting Foundation’s Creative Nonfiction Grant have been announced.
At BuzzFeed News, a look at the year in disinformation. Looking at lies about voter fraud, COVID-19, and the protests against systemic racism and police violence, Jane Lytvynenko concludes that 2020 was an “infodemic”: “Month after month, self-serving social media companies have let corrosive manipulators out for dollars, votes, and clicks vie for attention, no matter the damage.”
Sarah Smarsh, author of She Come By It Natural, a new book on Dolly Parton and her fans, discusses the first time she saw Parton in concert, identifying with Jodie Foster, and challenging the idea of a monolithically conservative white working class. For more on Parton, see Lindsay Zoladz’s review of Smarsh’s book in the winter issue of Bookforum.
In the winter issue of Yale Review, Namwali Serpell looks at memes, Bartleby, and affect theory to examine “black nonchalance”: “What does the nonchalant person decline? She declines to be a puppet: to take on, channel, and express for others. She declines to be a tool: to resist, rail, and fight for others. She declines to be a sponge: to absorb all that this racist, capitalist country pours out of its bloody, gaping maw.”
Tonight at 8 PM EST, the New York Public library is hosting the annual Robert B. Silvers Lecture in honor of the late editor of the New York Review of Books. This year, Molly Crabapple, Deborah Eisenberg, Michael Greenberg, Hari Kunzru, and Jana Prikryl will discuss the future of New York. The panel will be presented on Zoom and YouTube.
