Journalism

It’s May 1–Happy, er, Loyalty Day! TheNation, May 1.

For more than a century, May 1 has been celebrated as International Workers’ Day. It’s a national holiday in more than eighty countries. But here in the land of the free, May 1 has been officially declared “Loyalty Day” by President Obama. It’s a day “for the reaffirmation of loyalty”—not to the international working class, but to the United States of America.
. . . continued at TheNation.com, HERE

9 Questions for Errol Morris: The Nation 4/17

Jon Wiener: Donald Rumsfeld grins a lot in your movie “The Unknown Known.”  The most memorable thing about this film is his grin. What do you make of it?
Errol Morris: Supreme self-satisfaction. Cluelessness. Inability to deal with the reality of what he’s done.
continued at The Nation, HERE or HERE

Gore Vidal: At 10, I Wanted to Be Mickey Rooney: TheNation 4/7

Mickey Rooney, who died April 6, had many fans, including 10-year-old Gore Vidal. “What I really wanted to be,” Vidal wrote in his memoir Point to Point Navigation, “was a movie star: specifically, I wanted to be Mickey Rooney.” The inspiration? Not the “Hey kids, let’s put on a show” musicals Rooney made for MGM with Judy Garland—it was his role as Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Max Reinhardt and released in 1935, when Rooney was 14. “I wanted to play Puck, as he had,” Vidal recalled.
. . . continued at TheNation.com HERE

When Peter Matthiessen Was Silenced by his Publisher: The Nation 4/7

Peter Matthiessen, the legendary writer who died April 5, had one of his most important books withdrawn from publication for seven years as a result of attacks by government officials and the cowardice of his publisher, Viking Penguin.

It’s a story overlooked in many of the obits. Published in 1983, In The Spirit of Crazy Horse provided a passionate and solidly documented account of the events that culminated in a 1975 gun battle on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota between FBI agents and members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) that left two agents and one Indian dead. . . . continued at TheNation.com, HERE.

Q&A with Edmund White: The Nation 3/27

Jon Wiener: A lot of what you’ve written celebrates “the golden age of promiscuity” in 1970s New York. That seems at odds with the gay marriage movement today.
.
Edmund White:
First, I was opposed to gay marriage because it seemed like one more way that gays were wanting to assimilate. When I realized the Christian right was so opposed to it, as well as tyrannical governments in Africa and Russia, I thought, “It must be a good thing to fight for.” Now I have a confession to make: I got married in November to my friend Michael Carroll, whom I’ve been with for nineteen years. At least we didn’t rush into it.
continued at http://www.thenation.com/article/179032/qa-edmund-white

I Hate Genre: Q&A with John Banville/Benjamin Black: LA Review of Books 3/15

Q. There have been something like 14 John Banville novels, books that go in the “literary fiction” section of the bookstore and that win the Man Booker Prize; and as Benjamin Black you have now written eight books, and they go into the “mystery” section. So we have high and low, art and craft, poetry and plot; is that an okay way to talk about Banville and Benjamin Black?
A. No. I hate it. I wish they didn’t do that. . . .
. . .continued at LA Review of Books, HERE

The Talibanization of Hindu History: TheNation 2/14

When Penguin Books announced on Feb. 11 that it would withdraw from India and pulp The Hindus: An Alternative History in response to a lawsuit claiming the book “has hurt the religious feelings of millions of Hindus,” it was only the latest in a series of surrenders by distinguished publishers in the face of militant Hindu fundamentalism….
…more at TheNation.com HERE

7 Questions for Rachel Kushner: The Nation, 2/13

JW: you’ve said there are disadvantages to the paperback.
RK:
Yes, I said this softer edition is less useful for protecting yourself against the blows of an officer. I was kidding around, remembering the episodes at UC schools in California where people at demonstrations used books to protect themselves from riot police.
. . . continued at  The Nation, HERE.

Pete Seeger’s Biggest Day: The Nation, 1/28

November 15, 1969—“Vietnam Moratorium Day”—nearly half a million people gathered on the mall in Washington DC, to protest the war, and Pete Seeger was on the stage. “I guess I faced the biggest audience I’ve ever faced in my life,” he told me in an 1981 interview. “Hundreds of thousands, how many I don’t know. They stretched as far as the eye could see up the hillside and over the hill.”  The song he sang was “Give Peace a Chance” . . .
. . . continued at TheNation.com, HERE.