Times Literary Supplement @TheTLS (April 28, 2023) – This week’s @TheTLS, featuring Abigail Green on 1848; @WeTheBrandon on the geopolitics of space; @woodsgregory on James Purdy; @JulianBaggini on food policy; @scheffer_pablo on the Passion in the Netherlands; @CamilleRalphs_ on poetry anthologies – and more
Pensions – and ‘the fiscal impact of ageing’ – have long troubled the EU. A European Commission paper published in 2016 noted with relief that ‘most EU member states’ were reforming their pension systems. France is one of them. During his first term in office Emmanuel Macron envisaged an ambitious reform plan, but Covid-19 put paid to it. Re-elected in 2022, he put a different plan on the table; at its core is an increase in the retirement age from 62 to 64. It has been predictably unpopular. Pensions rank high on the list of French state expenditures. They are one of the cornerstones in France’s edifice of public provision, which is why the sound of drilling and hammering sets most citizens’ teeth on edge.
The New York Times Book Review – April 23, 2023:
The author’s latest book, “The Wager,” investigates the mysteries surrounding an 18th-century maritime disaster off Cape Horn.
There were multiple moments while reading David Grann’s new book, “The Wager,” about an 18th-century shipwreck, when it occurred to me that the kind of nonfiction narratives The New Yorker writer has become known for share something essential with a sturdy ship.
Catherine Lacey’s new novel follows a polarizing artist through a fractured country.
The narrator of “Biography of X,” the new Catherine Lacey novel, is a journalist named C.M. Lucca who worked for a Village Voice-like newspaper in New York City during the 1980s. C.M. has a cool tone and a lonely intelligence; she’s a solitary spirit.
In “Walk the Walk,” Neil Gross profiles three departments around the country experimenting with genuine reform.
WALK THE WALK: How Three Police Chiefs Defied the Odds and Changed Cop Culture, by Neil Gross
Trained as an oncological surgeon, Attia became interested in longevity because he saw that the “Four Horsemen” worked against it: diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease. All play a role in an unhealthy system, and all interrelate.
A data- and anecdote-rich invitation to live better, and perhaps a little longer, by making scientifically smart choices.
If you have Type 2 diabetes, then your chances of developing heart disease, cancer, and neurological disorders increases, and if your goal is to live well in old age, then it behooves you to change your ways in order to keep your insulin reception levels in the clear. How to do so?
An exhibition of the Algerian painter’s work liberates it from the political symbolism of late colonialism.
In November 1947 a fifteen-year-old prodigy from colonial Algeria named Baya, described variously as Kabyle, Berber, Muslim, and Arab, exhibited her gouaches and clay sculptures at the Parisian gallery of the art dealer Aimé Maeght. Yves Chataigneau, the French governor of Algeria, and Si Kaddour Benghabrit, the rector of the Paris Mosque, were the sponsors of the exhibition, and the opening attracted some of the most influential cultural figures of postwar Paris: the writers Albert Camus, François Mauriac, and André Breton; the painters Henri Matisse and Georges Braque; the designer Christian “Bebè” Bérard.
For generations, Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s prints of Roman views defined the popular image of the Eternal City. A profusion of new exhibitions and publications shows why he still speaks to us.
Also in the issue: Jacqueline Rose on C. P. Taylor’s final play, Colin B. Bailey on the Impressionists’ decorations, Wendy Doniger on Bengali tales from the mangrove forests, Christopher Benfey on the Black American potters of the nineteenth century, Jed Perl on high-tech high art, poems by Sasha Debevec-McKenney, Mosab Abu Toha, and Cyrus Console, and much more.
Times Literary Supplement @TheTLS (April 21, 2023) – This week’s issue features @tylercowen on long- vs short-termism; @ecshowalter on Jonathan Rosen and Michael Laudor; @NickHoldstock on Wang Xiaobo; @BenBollig on Sergio Raimondi; @islomane on noise pollution – and more.
Literary Review of Canada – May 2023: Andrew F. Sullivan’s The Marigold features a brief epigraph attributed to Rob Ford: “Everything is fine.” Those three words would be a lot more convincing coming from Jane Jacobs or perhaps even Drake, but coming from the late Toronto mayor, they smack of comedy, irony, and foreboding.
On the lost art of public conversation: It is right to be suspicious of anyone who claims that some prior epoch was a golden age of anything, whether it be talk shows, family values, civil discourse, or whatever else they find lacking in their own time.
A historical whodunit: Clara at the Door with a Revolver: The Scandalous Black Suspect, the Exemplary White Son, and the Murder That Shocked Toronto by Carolyn Whitzman
I recently returned to the Metropolitan Opera to see The Hours, based on Michael Cunningham’s novel. It was wonderful to be back in the glittering hall, after three long pandemic years, listening to Renee Fleming, Joyce DiDonato, and Kelli O’Hara bring Virginia Woolf and Cunningham’s other characters to life. That experience sent me looking for novels about music, and I was thrilled to see that Brendan Slocumb has a new one coming out only a year after his bestselling debut,
In the fourth annual Indie Issue, we let the books speak for themselves in these excerpts from a trio of starred Indieland picks: a memoir by two sisters who survived the Holocaust; another memoir about a teen’s coming-of-age on a sailing-school ship; and a collection of short stories from a renowned Bengali author.
In Daniel Seymour’s From Auschwitz With Love, sisters Manci Grunberger Beran and Ruth Grunberger Mermelstein describe their arrival at the concentration camp:
Father realized that we didn’t have much time together. So, he said to us, “No matter what happens, I want you to remember three things.”
The New York Times Book Review – April 16, 2023:
The author’s new book, “Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock,” urges readers to revise their conceptions of time and the world to nurture hope and action for a better future.
A book of photographs taken before February 2022 reveals formerly breathtaking landscapes that may never be the same.
In Jinwoo Chong’s debut novel, “Flux,” a time-warping discovery impacts the lives of three people coping with personal and systemic traumas.
Silicon Valley’s moral bankruptcy by Victor Davis Hanson
The Russian way of literature by Daniel J. Mahoney
China apologetics by Gordon G. Chang
Gillray: national lampooner by Myron Magnet
Boomers Daily 