Unpublished Newswire

Every October, when the Nobel Prizes are announced, readers receive a gift: we are reminded that literature is vast—vaster than empires, to coin a phrase. Chances are, the laureate for literature will be—at least for English-speaking readers—foreign in every sense. Even ardent book lovers might concede that they haven’t kept up with Elfriede Jelinek of Austria or Jon Fosse of Norway. How many of us were saving this year’s winner, Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai, for an especially rainy day? (And how many are pretending we knew his name all along?) True, no one can read everything...

In April 2024, students set up encampments at universities across Canada and the United States to protest Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. Columnists with prestigious outlets wrote condescending op-eds about the protesters. At the Wall Street Journal, they were called “cowardly” and “not compassionate,” with the writer claiming that onlookers were “relieved to see the NYPD come in [and drag] the protesters away.” These writers seemed ready to dismiss the demonstrators and paint them negatively, without really interrogating what was prompting them to set up camp for weeks on end. Meanwhile...