Book publishing has long had a reputation as a low-paying industry, but one that offers its professionals enviable perks—not the least of which is helping to influence the national discourse. Over the past few months, though, questions about whether that sort of trade-off is still working have been circulating on social media and roiling different factions of the industry. In March, a former assistant editor at Tor named Molly McGhee shared her resignation letter on Twitter. In it, she explained how she was finding success in a job she loved but was nonetheless overwhelmed by an insurmountable stream of work and frustrated by the murky path toward promotion. The post drew hundreds of responses (and more than 700 retweets). In May, the Bookseller released a report stating that 68% of publishing staffers in the U.K. felt burned-out in the last year.
Kids get older, and fads come and go. But some toys persist, almost stubbornly—artifacts passing from one generation to the next. In the toy business, these products are considered “classics.” It’s an amorphous category filled with all sorts of games and toys that have just a few things in common: namely, they are survivors in an industry where trends rule all. The Rubik’s Cube is, in many ways, the perfect example of a classic toy. More than 450 million are estimated to have been sold since 1978, with up to tens of millions of units still moving in a year. Etch A Sketch (180 million sold since 1960), Lego, Potato Head, Barbie, and, of course, Play-Doh are classics too. These toys are instantly recognizable but rarely advertised. They’re often low tech or analog. In fact, in a world full of screens, their tactility is increasingly part of the draw. Often, classic toys encourage what academics say is high-quality play, like problem solving or imaginative thinking. And, as some experts have found, such toys are highly nostalgic—conjuring warm, fuzzy memories in the parents who do the buying. This is how toys turn into tradition.
Wolfgang Tillmans credits as his first significant photograph a hard-to-read shot of a young male body—his own. He was 18, a high school student on a monthlong coming-of-age train trip away from his hometown of Remscheid, Germany. On a beach in southwestern France, holding a range finder camera borrowed from his mother and wearing his favorite shorts and T-shirt, he experimented and wound up with a semi-abstract composition in the manner of a Milton Avery painting: a curving patch of pink cotton, the clothing label in white on black trunks, a tan leg stippled with sand, and a mottled brown beach that takes up half the frame.
Stephen King’s “Fairy Tale” is an epic quest novel with a golden-haired hero and his beloved pooch who save a cursed people from an even more cursed villain. Surprisingly unscary, the book offers a journey through an enchanted world. Charlie Reade, the main character, warns the reader right off the bat: “I’m sure I can tell this story. I’m also sure no one will believe it.”
Like many people during the pandemic, King sought ways to occupy himself. He asked himself “What could you write that would make you happy?” This book was the answer.
The best book titles feel wholly different to the reader by the time the book is finished. And the best books teach you their own logic, offering specific and surprising definitions of previously canned words and ideas. It is very much to Jonathan Escoffery’s credit that, after finishing his debut story collection, “If I Survive You,” I realized how differently I thought of the title phrase. What does it mean to survive? What are the conditions under which this might be possible? Who is the “you” in each of our lives? Who is the “them”?
Marx, a writer with a particular interest in cultural trends, quickly arrives at his thesis: We cannot unravel the mystery of “how culture changes over time,” he states, without understanding status. In an attempt to “synthesize all the significant theories and case studies to explain how culture works as a system and why culture changes over time,” the book poses several questions: Is culture a mere byproduct of status? Is class anxiety the ultimate fertilizer for artistic production? Are we all just mindlessly adopting “certain techniques to ensure semiotic success?” Do we “make our aesthetic choices within the context of status?”
across from me at the sushi place this mad woman talking to nothing so loud all customers avert
their eyes to the shrimp passing and reject this one that one that one and then for some reason