This article first appeared in The National Book Review
Three great reads about books, from The New York Review of Books, Atlas Obscura, and The New Yorker. (Click through on the links to read them):
President Obama & Marilynne Robinson: A Conversation in Iowa (The New York Review of Books) - The President and the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist talk, and President Obama waxes literary - including telling Robinson that Gilead is "one of your most wonderful books."
We Have a Copy of Patricia Highsmith's Unpublished Essay on Green-Wood Cemetery (Atlas Obscura) - An engaging look at The Talented Mr. Ripley author Highsmith's unpublished essay for The New York Times on Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery, which Atlas Obscura obtained from the Swiss Literary Archives, where her papers are held. Among the highlights: Highsmith, who had recently been diagnosed with lung cancer, sticking her hand into the warm furnace where bodies were cremated.
Pond Scum: Henry David Thoreau's Moral Myopia (The New Yorker) - In this old-fashioned literary takedown of one of America's most beloved authors, Kathryn Schulz assiduously catalogs what she insists are Thoreau's moral flaws. "Why," she asks, "given Thoreau's hypocrisy, his sanctimony, his dour asceticism, and his scorn, do we continue to cherish 'Walden'?"