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
The artist discusses artistry, artificial intelligence, and the human experience.
Chatbots and image generators, newly on the rise, have sparked our imaginations—and our fears. As artificial-intelligence machines sharpen their ability to translate written prompts into images that accurately capture both style and substance, some visual artists worry that their specialized skills might be rendered irrelevant.
“Drawing Hands,” M. C. Escher, 1948.
A new crop of biotech startups want to revolutionize human reproduction.
In 2016, two Japanese reproductive biologists, Katsuhiko Hayashi and Mitinori Saitou, made an announcement in the journal Nature that read like a science-fiction novel. The researchers had taken skin cells from the tip of a mouse’s tail, reprogrammed them into stem cells, and then turned those stem cells into egg cells.
Drug syndicates and other criminal groups bought into the idea that a new kind of phone network couldn’t be infiltrated by cops. They were wrong—big time.
Many criminals have been convicted as a result of encrypted-phone stings—more than four hundred in the U.K. alone.Illustration by Max Löffler
Times Literary Supplement @TheTLS (April 14, 2023) – This week’s issue features @TristramHuntVA on monuments; @nclarke14 on English caricature; @HettieJudah on Action, Gesture, Paint @_TheWhitechapel; @jntod on J. H. Prynne; @rinireg on the Trump indictment – and more.
Notes on Donald Trump’s day in court.
By the time Donald Trump marched out from behind a phalanx of American flags and emerged into the gilded Mar-a-Lago ballroom to speak to cheering supporters on Tuesday night, America’s first indicted ex-President hardly seemed chastened by his historic day as a defendant in a Manhattan courtroom.
Following the Manhattan District Attorney’s investigation, the former President was arraigned on felony charges stemming from hush-money payments.
Times Literary Supplement @TheTLS (April 7, 2023) – This week’s @TheTLS, featuring the late Jane Maas on Philip Roth’s great love; David Throsby on consulting firms; an extract from The God Desire by @Baddiel; @LamornaAsh on Max Porter; @funesdamemorius on Mike Nelson; a new poem by Carl Dennis – and more.
Iconicon: A Journey Around the Landmark Buildings of Contemporary Britain
Its appeal is part of the recurrent cycle of the centripetal giving way to the lure of the burbs. Save that, in this instance, it’s not the lure that accounts for an invasion of beards and craft beer but the unaffordability of housing in East London. Let’s go to Croydon! For want of anywhere else.
Which archival sources are used and whose voices are silenced? The Marcoses have – for now – claimed the archive and seized the narrative. They tell the story of a golden age followed by a fall and a quest for redemption. In the Philippines, a deeply Catholic country, the story has a satisfying narrative arc.
Literary Review – April 2023 issue: The April issue of Literary Review is out now! In this month’s cover article, Kirsten Tambling looks at how Shakespeare’s Juliet has been reinterpreted and received through the ages.
Searching for Juliet: The Lives and Deaths of Shakespeare’s First Tragic Heroine – In 1611, the Somerset-born traveller Thomas Coryat described an Italian architectural novelty: a ‘very pleasant little tarrasse, that jutteth or butteth out from the maine building: the edge whereof is decked with many pretty little turned pillers … to leane over’.
Killing Thatcher: The IRA, the Manhunt and the Long War on the Crown
Conservatives like Ron DeSantis see Hillsdale College as a model for education nationwide.
By Emma Green
Conservative movements to reform education are often defined by what they’re against. At a recent public briefing, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, decried the imposition of critical race theory and mandatory diversity-and-inclusion training at the state’s schools.
The former President’s campaigns against officials investigating him have supplied Joe Biden with a favored theme: the need to fortify democratic institutions.
Maxine Hong Kingston: The Woman Warrior, China Men, Tripmaster Monkey, Hawai‘i One Summer, Other Writings edited by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Maxine Hong Kingston’s best work has a timeless quality, fresh, beautiful, horrifying, bursting with myth and fantasy and nagging reality.
The BBC: A Century on Air by David Hendy
This Is the BBC: Entertaining the Nation, Speaking for Britain? 1922–2022 by Simon J. Potter
World War II was the BBC’s finest hour, but its history since then reflects the corporation’s gradual loss of primacy in British life.
Fen, Bog and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis by Annie Proulx
Wild by Design: The Rise of Ecological Restoration by Laura J. Martin
Two recent books show that the concept of ecological restoration is a fuzzy one: even practitioners rarely agree on what is being restored, or to what end.
