Welcome back!
Headlines the past few days have centered on the arrival of many world leaders at the NATO summit. Among them, of course, is the eminent Donald Trump. And it seems he made quite a splash. The New Yorker put out a great run-down of The Donald’s antics at the event. It appears, at least from video footage, that some of Trump’s actions might have prompted a few world leaders to laugh at him behind his back. Of course, presidential candidate Joe Biden hopped all over the video and you can see the result here. To give it the usual literary twist, go check out this piece from McSweeney’s which gives the impeachment proceedings a Southern Gothic flare.
When faced with this kind of political (and economic) stupidity, one of the only approaches left for many writers is satire. Since Black Friday was just this past weekend, and since things seem to adequately dumb, go check out this interview over at ElectricLit. Mychal Denzel Smith interviews Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah about the portrayal of the absurdity of American racism and capitalism in his debut collection of stories, Friday Black.
Things tend to get a little uncomfortable when you mix art and money, though it doesn’t usually happen. NPR ran a great story the other day about the real relationship between a book’s popularity and its placement on bestseller lists. This comes well-timed around the holidays, as many (of you, hopefully) are planning on buying your loved ones some books. And, on that note, we’ll wrap things up with a great list from LitHub of under-appreciated books this past decade. Go check them out!