Journalism

When Nixon asked Haldeman about Philip Roth. . . . L.A. Review of Books 1/25

RICHARD NIXON didn’t talk much about American writers. On the White House tapes, which recorded his conversations from February 1971 to July 1973, there’s no mention of Norman Mailer, John Updike, or Gore Vidal. There’s no mention of best-selling authors of the era like William Peter Blatty of The Exorcist or Frederick Forsyth of The Day of the Jackal. But Nixon did talk about Philip Roth.
NIXON: What if anything do you know about the Roth book?
HALDEMAN: Oh, a fair amount.
. . . continued at LA Review of Books, HERE.

Gary Shteyngart Q&A: The Nation 1/23

JW: You spent your first seven years in the Soviet Union—what was your 7-year-old understanding of communism, of Lenin himself?

GS: Let’s start with Lenin. One of the biggest statues of Lenin was in Leningrad right outside our window. I loved Lenin so much that I would wake up every morning and hug his pedestal. When I was 5, I wrote a book called Lenin and His Magical Goose, in which Lenin and a talking goose conquer Finland and make it a socialist country. I very much wanted to become a soldier in the Red Army, or a cosmonaut. I wanted to try to launch an attack against the United States and make it safe for socialism.
– – – continued at The Nation, HERE.

Dick Cheney in Nixonland: TheNation 12/19

Dick Cheney came to the Nixon Library this week to talk about his new book, Heart.  When our most hated vice president visits the library of our most disgraced president, you look forward to a good night. So my friend Howard and I went to Yorba Linda, expecting a festive evening of Obama-bashing and a twisted trip back through the glories of the Bush years. . . . .  continued at TheNation.com, HERE.

Bill Ayers’ Weatherman Memoir: LA Review of Books 10/29

It’s not hard to understand what Bill Ayers and his friends in the Weather Underground were thinking in the early 1970s, when they made plans to bomb the Capitol and other sites. The Vietnam War was raging, Nixon was president. The American people were so distracted by the media, or blinded by ideology, or bought off by consumerism that they would never wake up; except, that is, for Bill Ayers and his friends. They saw what was going on. . . . ”
Review of Bill Ayers’ “Public Enemy”: continued at the LA Review of Books HERE

6 Questions for Jonathan Lethem: The Nation 10/10

Jon Wiener: The star of your new book [Dissident Gardens] is Rose Zimmer, the “Red Queen of Sunnyside” in the 1950s—you also call her “the Last Communist,” in capital letters. Where did you get Rose?

Jonathan Lethem: The mystery I was trying to explore was my grandmother’s political dark matter. As a kid, by the time I knew her she wasn’t talking about these things. But there was a famous photo of her in Life magazine in 1938 marching against Hitler in Manhattan. She was very proud of this photo, and it was an indication that she had been an activist and had lived the life of a dissident.
. . . continued at The Nation, HERE.

Hollywood, Hitler and Harvard: TheNation, 9/30

It doesn’t happen very often that a leading critic calls on a university press to withdraw and then reissue a corrected version of a scholarly book. But it’s happening now—the book is The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact with Hitler, by Ben Urwand; the publisher is Harvard University Press, and the critic is David Denby of The New Yorker . . .
. . . continued at TheNation.com, HERE.