On Twain’s autobiography
Mark Twain “is akin not only to Swift as a satirist, but also to Tolstoy and Dickens in his feelings for — and against — humanity, and to Chaucer and Shakespeare in his stature.”
Mark Twain “is akin not only to Swift as a satirist, but also to Tolstoy and Dickens in his feelings for — and against — humanity, and to Chaucer and Shakespeare in his stature.”
The C.I.A. is suing a former agent over his exposé, Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture. He talks with Gregory Levey at The New Yorker.
Like the narrator of his new novel, The Instructions, Adam Levin “wanted to be the Jewish Messiah” as a kid. “I could beat up everyone in my grade,” he says. (Via.)
Oscar Wilde may have forsworn a life as “a dried-up Oxford don,” but his classics training in tragedy, syllogism, and rhetorical style made itself felt in his writing, says Daniel Mendelsohn.
Elaine Showalter is surprised so few reviewers of Philip Roth’s Nemesis have mentioned that it’s “a brilliant and compassionate American re-imagining of Albert Camus’s The Plague.” (Via.)