Sunday Evening Longreads
Two Sunday evening longreads for you this week, Wonkistan.
First, The New Yorker talks to Salman Rushdie about how the fatwa placed upon him changed his life. It’s timely given the most recent round of Prophet defaming happening in the world.
He looked at the journalists looking at him and he wondered if this was how people looked at men being taken to the gallows or the electric chair.
Ivan appreciates Rushdie’s gentle teasing of Orthodox memorial services.
And two of Amanda’s favorite professors, Bryan Waterman and Cyrus R. K. Patell of A History of New York, review literary surveys of New York City ranging from the 18th to 20th centuries. The theme of having “missed it,” in particular, sure sounds familiar to this New Yorker:
New York, it seems, is always already over, its secrets exposed, its hotspots discovered by the masses, its authenticity drained by commodification, its bohemian frontiers closed, and the literature of New York—at least a good portion of it—would seem to be born of the sense of loss generated by that viewpoint.
Notes
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