Manchester City play a game of football today. Most of us will be watching. Which makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is why so few care about City’s owner playing an active role in a genocide so gruesome it can be seen from space. By @barneyronay.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/football/202...

Now happening in Central Park

My review for this weekend's WSJ is on Gerald Howard's fascinating biography of Malcolm Cowley, the 'literary bureaucrat' who helped to establish so much the American canon (gift link) www.wsj.com/arts-culture...

if you see this, post an album cover with a motor vehicle on it

What a day for a walk to Andy Goldsworthy’s extraordinary Hanging Stones on the North York Moors #AndyGoldsworthy

"I was seeing men styling, wallowing, and self-pitying, but I wasn’t seeing them reading or writing or thinking." Steve Donoghue on the vacuous, anti-intellectual world that men's magazines present to the young men who read them. open.substack.com/pub/stevedon...

Really honored to receive this for my translation of Michele's beautiful and thrilling book, and very grateful to ALTA and to the judges for what they had to say. Thanks to everyone who's read this one so far – this slug's trail is a long one! 💚🐛

It's been a James Schuyler day. The Manhattan sublime, from his Payne Whitney poems.

In a starred review, Publishers Weekly calls Daniyal Mueenuddin's 'This is Where the Serpent Lives' a "masterpiece." And it's true, this will be one of the finest novels published in years. Out in January, put it on your radar! www.publishersweekly.com/9780525655152

A bouquet of congratulations to C.D. Rose, a very deserving winner of the @goldsmithsprize.bsky.social for his brilliant, funny, inventive, cynical, enthralling, disorienting novel We Live Here Now. 👇

Federal agents pulling a woman out of Rayito Del Sol, a daycare by Lane Tech high school

Here's an invitation to take a trip through the new Nov/Dec edition of On The Seawall ... beginning with our feature on poems from STUDY OF SORROWS: TRANSLATIONS by Shangyang Fang @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social / ronslate.com

French author Laurent Mauvignier wins the 2025 Prix Goncourt for 'La Maison vide' - www.lemonde.fr/en/culture/a...

NEW: Footage of a US citizen in Chicago being rammed then dragged from her car on her way to work. Abducted, with no warrant, her family couldn’t find her for hours. She was later released with NO CHARGE. A DHS statement said she “violently resisted arrest, injuring two officers”. You decide…

NEWS: Federal agents crashed with woman’s car, pointed guns at her, dragged her out by legs, tossed her in a minivan, held her and (eventually) let her go without charges. This as Chicagoans say the immigration blitz is out of control. (DHS blames her.) www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/03/c...

Adultery! Then and now, in a pair of new novels (gift link). www.wsj.com/arts-culture...

Adultery! Then and now, in a pair of new novels (gift link). www.wsj.com/arts-culture...

Latest: Feds arrested Juan Barbosa Gomez in Portland on October 15, even though his family says he's got a valid work permit and no criminal record. But he's not on ICE's detainee locator. His family only could find out his location on a third-party inmate messaging app reason.com/2025/10/30/a...

My wife's relatives discovered a 1940 diary her grandfather wrote on parchment paper (he was a baker in Lille) during the German invasion of France. He recounts chauffeuring French officials, frantically fleeing Lille with his pregnant wife and three children and being taken prisoner.

BREAKING: Over 460 people were reportedly killed at a hospital in western Darfur that was taken by Sudanese paramilitary forces, the WHO chief says.

Found an old photo of one of my favourite mushroom sightings - a magpie inkcap :) Haven’t seen any this year (or since); this was taken in a nearby woodland on this day in 2017. #mushrooms

Soyinka's response is almost worthy of a second Nobel all by itself. (below)

"Investors are pressuring companies to streamline operations, seeking head-count reductions as steep as 30%." www.wsj.com/economy/jobs...

"It’s easier than ever to kill someone in America and get away with it." States with stand-your-ground laws have seen a 59% increase in legally sanctioned homicides from five years ago. www.wsj.com/us-news/homi...

“Dive In” by Andre Kertesz

RIP to David Bellos, a great translator, teacher, scholar and popularizer. Here's a charming little essay about what he learned from his landmark translation of Georges Perec's 'Life: A User's Manual'. online.wsj.com/article/SB10...

RIP to a dear friend and eminent scholar, David Bellos.

Watched an episode of ‘Friends’ in a waiting room. Many facial expressions.

What a sick world.

So, I'm playing the Bitter End. Kind of. I'll be there next Wednesday night to talk about Bob Dylan's books and other musician memoirs at the invitation of the fine folks at @backlisted.bsky.social. We'll be soliciting opinions from the crowd, too: Join us. bitterend.com#/events/149947

For those not in Chicago: It would be hard to overstate how broad & intense the public reaction & activity against ICE’s kidnappings are. This is a movement of everyday people who are going to do everything in their admittedly limited power to make it harder for these people to take their neighbors.

“For modern readers, Cortázar is an act of resistance against simplified narratives and attention spans taken over by tech addictions.” In Americas Quarterly‬‬, Miranda Mazariegos reviews Julio Cortázar’s newly reissued novel, “A Certain Lucas” - www.americasquarterly.org/article/a-cl...

I rewatched some LotR on this flight, and man, I never fully noticed how little juice everyone has in this war. Ring doesn't do anything, Gandalf's magic barely detectable, Sauron's not even a guy. Replacement-level fantasy army owns Middle-Earth in 48 hours. I take no pleasure in reporting this

Really appreciated this reflection on Wendell Berry. These books have meant a lot to me—my wedding featured readings from two WB passages—and I'm more curious than ever what the totality of his project amounts to, how he'll be remembered, what the long-term legacy of his work will be.

"Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story" is the 15th book in Wendell Berry's Port William series. Its arrival is a good moment to offer appreciation for this author--and, if you haven't yet, to join the membership of his readers. Gift link: www.wsj.com/arts-culture...

It’s been a long while! Empyrean Series nos. 46–50 are announced & available for preorder as of today. Books by Jean Paul, Pierre Custot, & Fernando Pessoa are due out in November. Ludwig Tieck & Niu Sengru will be published next spring. asterismbooks.com/publisher/em...

“Medical staff did not give her any food, water, or pain medication for several hours. Much later that evening, after a significant loss of blood, Lucia was transported to an emergency room approximately an hour away, with her arms and legs shackled.” www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

Favorite '60s jazz albums, a thread: Gene Ammons, Boss Tenor (1960). Legendary battle saxist/soul jazz pioneer stretches out. He leans into his huge ripe tone, occasionally double-timing to show his former sideman Trane's steps don't impress him much, before returning to crafting exquisite phrases.

you will just have to trust me that this essay is so good and worth your time to read!!!!

Which judges went on holiday together? Which author lost their literary innocence with a judge badmouthed his book? Who sat next to AS Byatt's roll of Sellotape? Me on the Booker Prize in the 2000s, with contributions from @ericawgnr.bsky.social, @lindasgrant.bsky.social, Damon Galgut and more:

"(Reviews “are all a species of stupidity, even when they are not stupid,” [Updike] wrote in 1970, before he began to write them regularly himself.)" A very fine Dwight Garner piece on the big new edition of John Updike's letters. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/b...

"The USS Maine and the RMS Lusitania never had their own soundtrack, and 'My Heart Will Go On' never mentions the Titanic. The one piece of luck the Edmund Fitzgerald had was to have her story immortalized in song." On a new keyhole history of the shipwreck. openlettersreview.com/posts/the-ga...

"Bennett has described her writing as rooted in a distinctly phenomenological approach, focused on the physical honesty of unfolding firsthand experience. She prioritizes the rustle of thought, the stark insight of skin." Intriguing piece on Claire-Louise Bennett. yalereview.org/article/audr...

Readers, birders, and friends, please join me for a conversation with Ryan Goldberg about “Bird City: Adventures in New York's Urban Wilds,” forthcoming from @algonquinbooks.bsky.social! November 8th, 11am at Book Club Bar, NYC. Ticket comes with the book and a bird walk in Tompkins Square Park! 🪶

We bombed a fishing boat in distress.

A lot to like and think about in Jed Perl's NYRB piece on recent essay collections by critics. Perl argues that the best critics write with strong foundational beliefs. That is true, yet very tricky, since criticism also demands submission to the work in question. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

This weekend's WSJ Fiction Chronicle leads with Lee Clay Johnson's "Bloodline," a story of gonzo small-town demagoguery in the vein of Coover, Gass, Crews and other chroniclers of the North American berserk. It is, to put it mildly, a timely subject. www.wsj.com/arts-culture...

Clifton Fadiman's anthology, Reading I've Liked, was one of the best-selling books of 1940. Its 900+ pages is an eclectic selection of excerpts from classics and now-forgotten books. You can read about some of the neglected ones here: neglectedbooks.com/?...

People have written about Muriel Spark so often that every piece now has to be a kind of meta- or meta-meta-criticism. Leo Robson is up to the task in the latest Bookforum, with nice excursions into Robbe-Grillet, Frank Kermode, Ian McEwan & John Updike. www.bookforum.com/print/3202/t...