May 23, 2025 ‹Literary center

Today: in 1911, President William Howard Taft chairs a ceremony to devote the New York Public Library.

• “Whenever I go to queer bars in the West Village (places I, a happy hour’s connoisseur, often frequented), I go near the building where Muñoz’s office was.” Marcos Gonsalez walks through the city of Jose Esteban Muñoz. | Enlightened biography
• Elizabeth Costello considers desire, death and the socially aware subsext of James Tiptree Jr. Its smoke has raised forever. | Enlightened criticism
• Richard Russon on “Pancho and Lefty” by Townes Van Zandt and the meaning of the sequence of words. | Enlightened craftsmanship
• Yiyun li’s Things in the wild simply grow upAlison Bechdel Spentand Robert MacFarlane Is a river alive? All features among The best revised books of the week. | Book marks
• “The truth, as it is often, turns out to be both simpler and deeper than our imagination.” Arvind Ethan David explores the surprising link between Raymond Chandler and PG Wodehouse. | Enlightened criticism
• Martha Park recommends the apocalyptic non-fiction of Mark O’Connell, Emily Rabotau, Jeff Sharlet and more. | Light up reading lists
• TJ Martinson examines the role of view on the page and in real life: “What we see and how we see it shaping who we are – or at least, who we believe ourselves – by building, distorting and defining our reality.” | Enlightened craftsmanship
• “It was raining a lot and there was a darkness hanging over the city like a moral eclipse.” Read in the novel by Juan José Millás Only smokeTranslated by Thomas Bunstead and Daniel Hahn. | Enlightened fiction
• Joel Suarez considers The “heavy relationship of education with elitism and democracy”. | N + 1
• Translator Ann Goldstein recommends books with “Solid English rhythms, English idioms, English rentals, English sounds– The things that I like to have somewhere in my mind, but not necessarily consciously, when I work. |
• “His first novel … was much more daring for his time than all the recent literary trends that have made and pulled and scribbled and scribbled.” Namwali Serpell revisits Nettie Jones Fish tales. | New York Review of Books
• Lora Kelley on Martin friends like “One of our last major literary celebrities. “| The magazine Paris
• James Dubinsky explores The lessons we can learn about the honor of the dead poetry written by veterans. | Daily jstor
• Richard Ovenden on Elyse Graham Book and dagger And the librarians who were spies. | Public books

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