The Smart Set is a weekly feature, compiled and posted by Lauren Cerand, that usually appears Mondays at 12:30 pm, and highlights the best of the week to come. Special favor is given to New York’s independent booksellers and venues, and low-cost and free events. Please send details to Ms. Cerand at lauren [at] maudnewton.com by the Thursday prior to . . .
It’s difficult to picture Melville asking a group of undergrads, “What’s at stake in this story?†or Dickinson clapping a colleague on the back after a faculty meeting.
Back from Tennessee, without my luggage but with a cold. Before our flight out last week, Max and I stopped into a Hudson Booksellers at JFK, where a couple anti-Obama books were the chain’s #13 and #14 bestsellers. At least until Max got done. I’m not an Obama acolyte — his votes on FISA, etc., have seen to that — . . .
Six of the 900 Dead Sea Scrolls are on display at the Jewish Museum through 1/4.
As Annie Proulx objects to pornographic Brokeback Mountain fanfic, the Guardian highlights some of the worst of it.