The novelist on the continuing relevance of Ibsen, the joyful quilt art of Faith Ringgold and where to find British scotch eggs in New York
Born in Greenwich, Connecticut in 1966, author Claire Messud studied at Yale University and the University of Cambridge. Her first novel, 1995’s When the World Was Steady, and her book of novellas, The Hunters, were finalists for the PEN/Faulkner award; her 2006 novel The Emperor’s Children was longlisted for the Booker prize. Messud is a senior lecturer on fiction at Harvard University and has been awarded Guggenheim and Radcliffe fellowships. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband, literary critic James Wood; they have two children. Her latest novel, This Strange Eventful History, is published on 23 May by Fleet.
Game-changing books that offer hope, as recommended by speakers at this year’s Hay festival, including Theresa May, Tom Holland, Helen Garner and Jon Ronson
A vivid cultural of digestion, from ancient Greece to All-Bran
Some people, observed Samuel Johnson, “have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.” And while we are minding our belly, our belly minds us: so, at least, we are encouraged to think by modern hymns to the wisdom of the enteric nervous system and the gut microbiome, to which all manner of marvels are increasingly attributed.
Here, then, is a book-length exercise in minding the belly: a vivid cultural history of changing metaphorical, political and scientific visions of our guts. The stomach is a-flutter when we are in love, and the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, though not for laparoscopic surgeons. (That phrase was apparently coined by the 19th-century American journalist Fanny Fern.) But our guts are also cerebral: the Greek physician Galen first observed that the stomach seemed to possess its own kind of intelligence, and to trust your gut is to tune into a more reliable source of truth. Donald Trump is here marvellously quoted as insisting that his gut can tell him more than other people’s brains can.
The author, a health historian, displays a touch of that academic tic whereby a book constantly narrates that it has just talked about something and is going to talk about something else next, but she is an engaging writer and adeptly traces a network of fascinating changes in ruling metaphors. “Today we speak in ecological terms – adverts for probiotics encourage us to nurture the microbial garden within – but in early modern Europe the stomach was imagined as being more alike to the bustling kitchen of a great country house, while 18th-century physicians fussed over it as a nervously afflicted invalid and through the Victorian period it was frequently condemned as an irascible foe, an enemy within implacably opposed to its owner’s comfort.”
In the long-running fable of the body politic, meanwhile, the digestive system has been two opposed things in series: first, an unruly populace to be kept in its place by a wise head; then the site of authentic proletarian value. The 20th-century American philosopher Stanley Cavell, discussing such metaphors in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, concluded splendidly: “No one is in a position to say what the right expression is of our knowledge that we are strung out on both sides of a belly.”
For some, our ungovernable guts have always stood in the way of progress and humanity’s perfection, both technological and spiritual. The 17th-century hermit Roger Crab became famous for his ascetic diet of “herbes and roots”: only vegetarianism could lead to godliness. A prominent Victorian doctor, meanwhile, denounced the stomach as a “strangely wicked and ungrateful” organ that was “implacably opposed to man’s progress and comfort”. In the early 20th century, vivisectionists discovered new facts about the machinery of digestion by means of horrific experiments on living dogs in packed lecture theatres, and suffragists on hunger strike were force-fed by violence.
Women in particular, Richardson shows, have long been the focus of worries about digestion. Many accusations of witchcraft in the early modern period centred on allegations that women had spoiled food or milk; centuries later, constipation became coded as a particularly female complaint, to be cured by such quasi-medicinal products as Bile Beans (an Australian laxative introduced in 1899, to keep female customers “healthy, happy & slim”) and Kellogg’s cereals, which according to one 1930 advert for All-Bran would preserve a woman’s “bloom of youth” by keeping her regular. Contrariwise, to “have guts” in the sense of being tough is primarily thought of as a male virtue, while “intestinal fortitude” (coined by an American doctor after watching a football game in 1914) came to describe the warfighting capability of a nation’s men.
Now, however, our guts are peaceful: the alimentary system has been colonised anew by the wellness-industrial complex, with its probiotics and experimental faecal transplants. Dr Johnson might be tickled to learn that to mind one’s belly has become a cornerstone of mindfulness.
Cannes film festival A dying director who fled from the US to Canada agrees to make a confessional film in Schrader’s fragmented and anticlimactic story
Muddled, anticlimactic and often diffidently performed, this oddly passionless new movie from Paul Schrader is a disappointment. It is based on the novel Foregone by Russell Banks (Schrader also adapted Banks’s novel Affliction in 1997) and reunites Schrader with Richard Gere, his star from American Gigolo. Though initially intriguing, it really fails to deliver the emotional revelation or self-knowledge that it appears to be leading up to. There are moments of intensity and promise; with a director of Schrader’s shrewdness and creative alertness, how could there not be? But the movie appears to circle endlessly around its own emotions and ideas without closing in.
The title is partly a reference to the national anthem of that nation, which is a place of freedom and opportunity which may have an almost Rosebud-type significance for the chief character, an avowed draft-resister refugee from the US in the late 60s, who becomes an acclaimed documentary film-maker in his chosen country. Maybe Vietnam was his real reason for fleeing and maybe it wasn’t. This central point is one of many things in this fragmented film which is unsatisfyingly evoked.
The Chinese American author of The Book of Goose pays tribute to the late writer, reflecting on the rich rewards of revisiting her stories over many years
Two days after Alice Munro died, I went to an event in New York, and found myself among strangers. A woman asked me if I’d heard that the great “Janet Munro” had died. Janet? The confusion was cleared up, and a man told me about Munro’s life story, with a detailed description of the photo used for her obituary in the New York Times. Another woman told me that, unlike most writers, Munro did not write novels, only stories. “Isn’t that interesting?” Next came the inevitable question, which people often ask of someone who writes novels and stories: “Which is easier for you?”
Easy? That’s an adjective that I’ve never associated with literature.
A compelling debut digs into the conflicting emotions at the heart of an aristocratic family in 2010s England
The cast of Allen Bratton’s debut may sound familiar. Hal, the young heir to the house of Lancaster, wastes his hours in the Boar’s Head pub with his friends Poins and Falstaff. His father, Henry, tries to curtail his son’s bad behaviour, while seeking alliances that might shore up his troubled household. As the pair circle, enter Harry Percy, a dashing family friend who looks set to lock horns with Hal.
Names and themes from Shakespeare’s Henry IV echo through Henry Henry, which explores family, faith and aristocratic succession in 2010s England. Hal heads to pubs, kebab shops and parties, washing down cocaine with gin and beer. He is a rare visitor to the thinktank that nominally employs him, although he does manage to shuffle to morning mass and his father’s private members’ club, which he roguishly visits without a jacket and tie, so that the porter must dress him with whatever spares are available.
Judges describe second novel set between south-east London and Ghana as ‘symphonic’ and ‘viscerally moving’
British-Ghanaian author Caleb Azumah Nelson has won this year’s Dylan Thomas prize for his second novel Small Worlds, which judges described as “symphonic” and “viscerally moving”.
Azumah Nelson, 30, was awarded the £20,000 prize at ceremony on Thursday in Swansea, the home city of the poet Dylan Thomas. The prize is given to a writer aged 39 or under in memory of Thomas, who died at that age.
A mega egg in Paris, a hovering hotel in Machu Picchu, an hourglass tower in New York, a pleasure island in Baghdad … we reveal the architectural visions that were just too costly – or too weird
Did you know that, if things had gone differently, the Pompidou Centre could have been an egg? In the 1969 competition for the Paris art centre – ultimately won by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, with their inside-out symphony of pipework – a radical French architect called André Bruyère submitted a proposal for a gigantic ovoid tower. His bulbous building would have risen 100 metres above the city’s streets, clad in shimmering scales of alabaster, glass and concrete, its walls swelling out in a curvaceous riposte to the tyranny of the straight line.
“Time,” Bruyère declared, “instead of being linear, like the straight streets and vertical skyscrapers, will become oval, in tune with the egg.” His hallowed Oeuf would be held aloft on three chunky legs, while a monorail would pierce the facade and circle through the structure along a sinuous floating ribbon. The atrium was to take the form of an enclosed globe, like a yolk.
From pests to pampered pets … how Victorian artist Louis Wain ushered in the age of the cat
‘Catland”, as Kathryn Hughes describes it, is two things. One is the imaginary universe of Louis Wain’s illustrations – in which cats walk on their hind legs and wear clothes, and humans do not feature. In the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, these kitschy pictures were everywhere and he was world famous. He’s all but forgotten now, though his influence lives on. And one of the ways it does, Hughes argues, is in the other “Catland”, the one we all live in. Wain’s career accompanied a transformation in attitudes between 1870 and 1939 in which cats went from being necessary evils or outright pests to fixtures of home and hearth.
For much of human history, cats were nameless creatures who lived on scraps, caught mice and unsightly diseases, yowled in streets, were familiars of witches and had fireworks stuffed up their bums by cruel children. Now, flesh-and-blood cats are beloved family pets, selectively bred, and accustomed to lives of expensive idleness, while fictional cats are cute rather than vicious, cuddly rather than satanic. The small part of the internet that isn’t pornography, it’s sometimes observed, is mostly cat pictures.
In They Came for the Schools, Mike Hixenbaugh looks at how a conservative agenda caused conflict in his Texas school system
Mike Hixenbaugh had been a journalist for years, reporting on a variety of topics ranging from education policy to healthcare, the military and other subjects, when one day he discovered a potential story literally in his front yard. It was the summer of 2020, and in response to a local Facebook thread spreading false information about antifa operating in his neighborhood, Hixenbaugh and his wife, who is Black, put up a Black Lives Matter lawn sign in their front yard. The response was prompt: “Every weekend for two months after my wife put the sign up, someone drove their four-wheeler into our yard and did donuts in it, churning up deep divots in the grass.”
At that point, Hixenbaugh realized that something had been happening in his quiet Dallas suburb of Southlake, something that was probably very big – unraveling just what was afoot would be the journalistic work of years, and would ultimately result in his new book, They Came for the Schools.
Publisher Bloomsbury has promised to correct the error made in Hari’s new book Magic Pill
Johann Hari and his publisher Bloomsbury have apologised after the author wrongly claimed in his latest book that Observer restaurant critic Jay Rayner had taken the diabetes drug Ozempic.
In Magic Pill, Hari claimed that Rayner said Ozempic “robbed him of his pleasure in food so severely that even in great restaurants in Paris, he couldn’t find any joy”. In an X post on Sunday, Rayner said that Hari’s claim was “complete and utter bollocks” and that he has “never used Ozempic or anything similar”, linking to a column he wrote in which he had explained why he would never take the drugs. He said that he was “mystified” as to why Bloomsbury “did not go through the text with a fine tooth comb”.
Enlarge/ John Milton citing Spenser on the recent history of Ireland in his 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles. Note Milton's italic e, hooks and curls on letters and distinctive s's. (credit: Phoenix Public Library)
John Milton is widely considered to be one of the greatest English poets who ever lived—just ask such luminaries as John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Samuel Jonson, and Voltaire, who once declared, "Milton remains the glory and the wonder of England." But while Milton's own books continue to be widely read and studied, there are only a handful of books in collections today known to have been part of his personal library.
Add one more title to that small list, as scholars recently discovered a copy of Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland in the Phoenix Public Library, containing handwritten notes in Milton's distinctive hand. This makes the volume extra-special, since only two other books once owned by Milton also contain handwritten notes. The scholars detailed their findings in a new article published in the Times Literary Supplement.
Holinshed's Chronicles is a hugely influential and comprehensive three-volume history of Great Britain, first published in 1577; it was followed by a second edition in 1587. A London printer named Reginald Wolfe started the project and hired Raphael Holinshed and William Harrison to help him create a "universal cosmography of the whole world." Wolfe died before the book could be completed, and the project was eventually scaled down to a history of England, Scotland, and Ireland, complete with maps and illustrations.
Fossil Free Books’ statement also demands that the book festival sponsor stops investing in ‘companies that profit from Israeli apartheid, occupation and genocide’
More than 200 authors including Naomi Klein, Sally Rooney and George Monbiot have signed a statement by Fossil Free Books (FFB), which puts increased pressure on investment management firm Baillie Gifford, sponsors of the Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction. In addition to the reiteration of its previous demands that the company ceases its investments in the fossil fuel industry, the group is asking that Baillie Gifford also divests “from companies that profit from Israeli apartheid, occupation and genocide”, as it believes that “solidarity with Palestine and climate justice are inextricably linked”.
Literary organisations that accept sponsorship from Baillie Gifford “can expect escalation, including the expansion of boycotts, increased author withdrawal of labour, and increased disruption until Baillie Gifford divests,” the statement reads.
The Ontario-born writer turned the ‘classic New Yorker-style short story’ into the highest form of literature, by taking an obsessively detailed interest in the people who lived in her small Canadian town
Back in 2006, I visited Alice Munro in Ontario to interview her for the publication of her collection The View from Castle Rock. She had sworn off any future publicity and claimed she didn’t plan on writing much longer – two more collections followed, along with the International Man Booker and the Nobel. She was a mere 74 at that point. The cult of Munro was still something of a members only club then, with writers such as fellow Canadian Margaret Atwood (with whom she was friends for more than 45 years) and the late AS Byatt among her many admirers, along with relative young guns such as Jonathan Franzen and Lorrie Moore.
So, I found myself in Goderich (billed as “Canada’s prettiest town”) in a suitably Munrovian mizzle sometime in the autumn. Munro lived in neighbouring Clinton, with her second husband Gerry Fremlin. We met for lunch in a little restaurant called Bailey’s Fine Dining (white tablecloths and tinkly music). She had a regular table by the bar and a key that she produced from her handbag as the staff were clearing up so we could continue chatting over glasses of white wine diluted with water, while poor Fremlin listened to Swan Lake in his truck outside.
Librarians are fighting a nationwide battle against high e-book prices, which so far has yielded minimal results. Despite efforts and temporary legislative victories, strict renewal and loan policies imposed by publishers keep e-book costs high, limiting the number of popular titles libraries can offer and leading to frustration among patrons. Axios reports: Publishers typically require libraries to renew the license to each e-book every two years, or after 26 loans -- policies that libraries call prohibitively expensive. This restricts the number of e-books -- particularly popular bestsellers -- that they can lend out to patrons, who are angry and baffled by the limitations. Readers love the free (to them) apps that allow them to borrow countless e-books and audiobooks: Libby (the dominant one, run by OverDrive) and hoopla. But some libraries say that the cost of renewing their contracts with OverDrive and hoopla are prohibitive, so they're dropping the apps -- hoopla in particular.
The Association of American Publishers argues that it must protect the rights of copyright owners -- that is, authors -- to be fairly compensated for their work. hoopla and Libby say they're just the middlemen. "It's really not up to us, to be honest," Ann Ford, a vice president at hoopla, tells Axios. "It's the publishers that make the rules." Libraries have a "unique and determinative public mission" that should entitle them to more favorable e-book purchasing terms when using public funds, says Kyle Courtney, a lawyer and Harvard librarian who drafted model e-book legislation for states.
"These are nonnegotiable contracts, and the libraries have been trying to get a deal for years. We need the coercive power of the state sitting behind us at the table saying, 'We need a special slice of the pie.'"
You can get thousands of free e-books over the course of 2024 if you know where—and when—to look. All year long, Amazon is offering up free Kindle e-books to readers, with new opportunities popping up every month.
This year also marks the 10th anniversary of Stuff Your Kindle Day, the biggest free e-book event of the year, offering up over a thousand free e-books. But that's later this year. In May, Prime members can get two free Kindle e-books from Amazon's First Reads program, one of them being this month's short read.
What is Amazon's First Reads?
Amazon First Reads is a program aimed at Prime members that offers early access to new e-books across many genres, as curated by First Reads editors (one of your many Prime Member benefits). Prime members can choose to download one free e-book every month from a rotating list—though some months that number is bumped up to two—and non-members get them for a discounted price. These e-books can be read on any compatible Kindle device or via the free Kindle app.
Go to the First Reads landing page to see the full list of e-books available this month. Once you find a book that seems interesting, click the "Shop Now" button. Make sure you’re not being redirected to the Kindle mobile application because you won't see the free book option; instead, use your browser (or just "check out" your free book on your computer).
Make sure you’re not clicking the ”Pre-order for...” button, as that will direct you to pay; instead, click the “Read for Free” button under the First Reads banner. This will send the e-book directly to the Kindle linked to your Amazon account.
You can see what it should look like from the screenshot below.
Credit: Daniel Oropeza
You’ll know you did it right when you see a “Thanks, [your name]!” order summary indicating the e-book is being auto-delivered to the Kindle Cloud Reader.
Free Amazon Kindle e-books available in May 2024
This month, you can choose one from eight Kindle e-books, plus you get the free "bonus short read," Tiger Chair: A Short Story by Max Brooks, author of World War Z.
Amazon notes the genre for each of the books above the title, offering a quick way to narrow down your options. If you hover over the "See Editor Notes" under the "Shop Now" button, you'll be able to read a short synopsis from the First Reads editor who picked the book.
The paperback version of A Hacker’s Mind has just been published. It’s the same book, only a cheaper format.
But—and this is the real reason I am posting this—Amazon has significantly discounted the hardcover to $15 to get rid of its stock. This is much cheaper than I am selling it for, and cheaper even than the paperback. So if you’ve been waiting for a price drop, this is your chance.
In fact, throughout the entire book, Dixon fails to identify a single blockchain project that has successfully provided a non-speculative service at any kind of scale. The closest he ever comes is when he speaks of how “for decades, technologists have dreamed of building a grassroots internet access provider”. He describes one project that “got further than anyone else”: Helium. He’s right, as long as you ignore the fact that Helium was providing LoRaWAN, not Internet, that by the time he was writing his book Helium hotspots had long since passed the phase where they might generate even enough tokens for their operators to merely break even, and that the network was pulling in somewhere around $1,150 in usage fees a month despite the company being valued at $1.2 billion. Oh, and that the company had widely lied to the public about its supposed big-name clients, and that its executives have been accused of hoarding the project’s token to enrich themselves. But hey, a16z sunk millions into Helium (a fact Dixon never mentions), so might as well try to drum up some new interest!
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