Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Published
Revealing newsletter (post? article? we need better nomenclature in our newsletter-heavy moment) from Charlotte Shane about her own feelings of exposure upon being published, plus the experiences of several others (Rumaan Alam and Lydia Kiesling to just name a couple). One of the side effects of their being SO MANY BOOKS all the time is that often, heck most of the time, a book doesn’t get a whole lot of attention. This thing that was/is an author’s central project gets read by some folks, maybe a nice notice here and there, but soon enough gets lapped in the release cycle by other things. Good advice and reflection for writers here but revealing for others interested in what it means to throw your hat in the cultural ring.
Charlie Kaufman’s New Short Film Is Coming to a Public Library Near You
I had never considered a straight-to-library streaming deal. Perhaps I should have. Because Charlie Kaufman’s new short film is going right to Kanopy, the movies-and TV-service that libraries can use to get non-book digital media to their borrowers. I doubt Kanopy is ever going to compete with things like Knives Out or K-Pop Demon Hunters, but there is a cohort of creators that might be a great fit for library-first stuff: all the people and projects that suddenly find themselve de-funded by cuts to NPR, PBS, and Voice of America. Libraries are subject to governmental funding whiplash themselves, but it can be more locally-determined. This is a data point worth watching.
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White House to conduct review of Smithsonian museum exhibitions to ensure they fit with Trump’s view of American history
My family had a terrific time touring the Library of Congress and darn near all of the museums of the Smithsonian on a trip this summer. And I had this thought at least a dozen times: do the Trump people know about this? About the statue of Charles Darwin we took a family selfie with? The displays on slavery and Jim Crow in the African American History Museum? The series of maps showing forced removal of tribes from basically day 1 of what would become the United States? And it turns out they do. And like other organs and conduits of anything resembling truth, they are not happy about it. Whoever you are in the bowels of these places that can find any way you can to resist this crap, I am pulling for you.