I probably won’t be able to resist Gordon Thomas’ Secret Wars: One Hundred Years Of British Intelligence Inside MI5 And MI6, a book Simon Maxwell Apter calls “such a rollicking good read, Thomas can almost be forgiven for his supercilious attitude toward ‘human rights lawyers’ and his somewhat sycophantic approval of any action pursued, legally or not, in the name . . .
Did opprobrium drive Thoreau to Walden Pond? In 1844 he enraged Concord by starting a blaze that earned him the name “woods burner.”
As a bona fide Twain obsessive, I am of course almost unnaturally excited about Who Is Mark Twain?, a forthcoming compilation of some of the Huck Finn author’s previously unpublished work. Last December The New Yorker offered a preview: “The Privilege of the Grave,” which sheds light on Twain’s thoughts about death and posthumous publication. Now B&N Review provides another . . .
Margaret Drabble will stop writing fiction lest she end up “repeating myself without knowing it, which is what old people do endlessly.”
“I’ve always found the Sylvia Plath worship creepy, and now the friends of her recently deceased son Nicholas do, too.”