French provocateur Dieudonné was arrested yesterday after he posted what authorities are calling a terrorist apologia on Facebook, “Tonight, as far as I’m concerned, I feel like Charlie Coulibaly.” At the Intercept, Glenn Greenwald digs into the hypocrisy he sees in the free-speech tributes in France, concluding, ”This week’s celebration of France—and the gaggle of tyrannical leaders who joined it—had little to do with free speech and much to do with suppressing ideas they dislike while venerating ideas they prefer.”
Jonathan Franzen will be appearing on May 27th at BEA to get the conference off to its usual rousing start, and promote his forthcoming novel, Purity, which will be published in September by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
A look at the sleek new offices of Wired magazine, along with some admonishments by editor-in-chief Scott Dadich to not treat the place like a “pirate ship.”
At Gawker, the recently returned Alex Paranee reviews some of his favorite media pranks of the past few years, and entices readers with this promise: “Over the next few weeks, I plan to work closely with site leads, editors and reporters from all the Gawker Media sites to identify the perfect targets—the most obnoxious puffed-up blowhards, sanctimonious poobahs, corrupt gatekeepers, venal officials, and credulous watchdogs in each site’s respective fields—and dream up entertaining ways to embarrass or expose them.”
David Mitchell, whose novel The Bone Clocks was published last fall, has completed a new novel, Slade House, which originated as a series of tweets.
At the Awl, Haley Mlotek uses the recent Celine ad featuring Joan Didion to ponder what Didion has come to signify. “The intentions of the brand behind the ad were, I felt, a trolling of the most epic order. There is only a slight difference between ‘trolling’ and ‘knowing your audience better than they know themselves,’ and Céline walks that line perfectly: a case of correlation not being causation. I didn’t feel trolled because Céline was mocking me, or us, but because I had been so thoroughly and effectively target marketed, an experience that is like being a deer in branded headlights. We’ve been seen!”