 Colleen Shogan testifies before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on her nomination to be archivist of the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington on Tuesday. (Screenshot from Senate Office Building video) | For most of its history, the National Archives — that august repository of America's documents — kept itself filed far from the fray of partisan politics. But that was before the chaotic reign of Donald Trump. The shredder-in-chief posed a unique challenge for officials charged with preserving White House records. And evidence that Trump sometimes flushed documents down the toilet plunged the agency into fresh alarm. When boxes of government documents were discovered at Trump's lair in Florida, the archival gloves came off. The FBI raided Mar-a-Lago (new revelations), the former president cried "witch hunt," and the enmity between Republicans and the National Archives reached 451 degrees Fahrenheit. No one denies that climate change. | "Sarah Bernhardt, Virginia Woolf... plus a host of other lesser-known women... all are given fresh life in this entrancing choric collage of a novel." –Claire Allfree, Daily Mail | | | | | Last year, President Biden — who has his own challenges with errant documents — nominated Colleen Shogan to be the first woman to lead the National Archives. Shogan is currently senior vice president and director of the David M. Rubenstein National Center for White House History. She's worked for the Library of Congress, she's taught at George Mason University, and she's published a series of mystery novels set in Washington. But amid the contentious debate over secret documents and presidential papers, Shogan's qualifications weren't enough to get her confirmed. After a fiery hearing in September, her nomination was — to borrow the title of one of her novels — "Dead As a Duck." This year, with what could be a lack of foresight or a surfeit of loyalty, Biden nominated Shogan again. She had a new Senate hearing on Tuesday. A few substantive issues were addressed. Under questioning about her priorities, Shogan stressed the need to accelerate digitization of the archives. And she committed to resolving a backlog of 300,000 requests for military records that veterans need to receive benefits. But Republicans spent much of the hearing producing sound bites for Fox News about right-wing goblins, conspiracies and pet peeves. Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) wanted to know if Shogan thought the Constitution should be labeled with a trigger warning. "Absolutely not," she replied. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) wanted to know if visitors to the National Archives should be forced to cover up antiabortion slogans on their clothing (story). "Absolutely not," Shogan replied. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who's so packed with incendiary misinformation that he might spontaneously combust if he stepped foot in the National Archives, wanted to know if Shogan would respond to questions from minority members of Congress about the origins of covid-19. "I will," she replied. But the real diva of the day was manhood guru Josh Hawley. The Republican senator from Missouri was irate that Shogan locked her Twitter account. She had previously said that her tweets were about events at the White House Historical Association, sports teams, her dog and her mystery novels, but Hawley wasn't falling for that. For eight contemptuous minutes, Hawley, a Yale-trained lawyer, pounded away on tweets he'd managed to extract from the ether. It turns out that on Feb. 18, 2022, Shogan bemoaned the lifting of mask requirements for children under the age of 5, "one of whom I happen to have," the virile senator preened. And on May 26, 2022, Shogan retweeted a post about banning assault weapons. Once, she even tweeted about Republican efforts to overturn the presidential election. Like Perry Mason swelling toward a triumph, Hawley kept asking, "Is that a post about sports teams or your dog or mystery novels?" But Shogan wouldn't budge. Over and over again, she replied, "My social media is in my personal capacity." "You lied to us under oath!" Hawley scoffed. "This is the most extraordinary thing I have seen in my brief time in the Senate," which is extraordinary, considering what we've seen of Hawley during his brief time in the Senate. (Run, Hawley, Run.) When that performance petered out, it fell to Sen. Paul to take a different, perfectly reasonable tack. "Being a liberal should not disqualify you," he said. "If we got rid of liberals, we might not have a lot of librarians or archivists." But Paul noted that his office wouldn't even hire interns without first checking their social media accounts. Such posts can reveal important clues about an applicant's character, prejudices and biases. Indeed, there's something disingenuous about Shogan's refusal to take responsibility for statements that she once posted publicly. We deserve more candor and transparency from someone aspiring to be our nation's chief records keeper. Unseal your tweets, Dr. Shogan. You have nothing to lose but Sen. Hawley's hysterics. Books to screens and back again - "Daisy Jones & the Six," starring Riley Keough and Sam Claflin, debuts today on Prime Video (review). Produced by Reese Witherspoon, this faux rock documentary series is based on Taylor Jenkins Reid's best-selling novel inspired by Fleetwood Mac. The adaptation was inevitable. (The real-life saga was just as passionate and tumultuous.) In her review for The Washington Post, Karen Heller said reading the book felt like inhaling "a vat of movie popcorn saturated in butter-flavored topping" (review).
- "A Little White Lie," adapted from Chris Belden's novel "Shriver," debuts today in theaters and on streaming platforms. The comedy, starring Michael Shannon and Kate Hudson, is about a handyman who's mistaken for a celebrated reclusive writer and invited to a literary festival (trailer). Washington Post critic Omari Daniels says, "The film hints that there's much more to this mystery man than he's willing to disclose" (review).
- Has any modern short story spawned as many offspring as "Children of the Corn?" Stephen King's 1977 classic is about an unhappy husband and wife driving to California. Not only do they get stuck in Nebraska, but the town is inhabited by demon-worshiping children. The latest resuscitation — the 11th? the 12th? — debuts today in theaters (trailer). If this keeps up long enough, someday we'll get a geriatric version called "Children of the Creamed Corn."
- "Your Driver Is Waiting," by Priya Guns, is a new novel inspired by Martin Scorsese's 1976 film "Taxi Driver." In his review for The Washington Post, Jon Michaud writes, "Readers are advised to buckle their seat belts before opening these pages." (review).
- "Love at First Kiss," which starts streaming today on Netflix, isn't based on a book, but it's about a man named Javier, who's a book publisher. In this Spanish-language romance, every time Javier kisses a woman, he can see her future (trailer). Not to be a spoilsport, but that is not the clairvoyant skill most book publishers wish they had.
 James Bond was imagined by Ian Fleming and then reimagined by several later novelists, including Sebastian Faulks, Anthony Horowitz and, next month, Kim Sherwood. (William Morrow; Vintage; Harper; William Morrow) | Clearly, Dr. No is testing me. Last week, in a painful feat of fence-sitting, I suggested that it might be appropriate, in some cases, to remove offensive words from some of Roald Dahl's books for children. This week comes news that Ian Fleming Publications Ltd. is making the James Bond novels nice. Yes, 70 years after "Casino Royale" was first published, the old spy books are being retyped by a newly sensitive Ms. Moneypenny. I feel shaken, not stirred. When it comes to antiquated thrillers for adults, my rule is strictly live and let die. But the owners of Fleming's valuable literary estate are determined that diamonds are forever, and if there's one more pence they can squeeze out of those old stories, they'll do it. According to the Telegraph, Fleming's original books will be revived once more, but this time the n-word and many of his other ugly racist, misogynist and homophobic attitudes will be burned away, as though by Goldfinger's laser. The new inoffensive paperbacks will be released this spring. A statement from Ian Fleming Publications explains, "We looked at the instances of several racial terms across the books and removed a number of individual words or else swapped them for terms that are more accepted today but in keeping with the period in which the books were written." Aside from the usual stiff-upper-lip arguments about literary integrity and historical fidelity, this scheme to reeducate the late Ian Fleming as an Oberlin queer studies major strikes me as a mission impossible. It would take more than Octopussy's eight arms to remove all the cringe-inducing tropes in his original books. Far better to just keep publishing fresh Bond stories for each new generation, as has been done since Kingsley Amis published "Colonel Sun" in 1968. Next month, look for Kim Sherwood's "Double or Nothing." It's the start of a series about three MI6 double-O agents who are, respectively, Algerian French, gay and Muslim. Shocking. Positively shocking.  Random House; Avery; background photo of Buckingham Palace in London (File photo by Ron Charles) | How does the world's fastest-selling nonfiction writer goose his sales two months later? If you're Prince Harry, author of the memoir "Spare," you speak to all your readers around the world simultaneously. (The verdict on Prince Harry's book: Juicy, humorous, resentful and sad.) Tomorrow at noon ET, Harry and best-selling doctor-writer Gabor Maté will livestream what's being billed as "an intimate conversation" about "living with loss and the importance of personal healing." While "Spare" is the prince's first book, Maté, 79, is the author of several books about attention-deficit disorder, stress-related diseases, addiction and trauma. His most recent work, written with his son Daniel, is "The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture." A physician based in Canada, Maté was born in Budapest in 1944 and lost family members to the Holocaust. The Prince and his American wife, Meghan Markle, certainly generate a massive amount of controversy, but Maté is a controversial figure himself. In 2011, Canadian health authorities ordered the doctor to stop treating addicts with ayahuasca, an illegal hallucinogen derived from plants from the Amazon. And in 2014, Maté published an op-ed that addressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directly as "you who with surgical precision slaughter innocents, the young and the old." He went on to compare modern-day Palestinian fighters to Jews who resisted Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto. During tomorrow's live-streaming event, Prince Harry has promised to answer a few questions submitted in advance by ticket holders. Which brings me to what feels a little like a shakedown: To watch this conversation about healing, you must buy a ticket, which requires living with a loss of $33.09 plus the $4.06 fee. That includes a new copy of "Spare," which for most of Harry's fans will surely be a spare copy. Given that Maté is an expert on the negative effects of capitalism, that's a royal irony. (Ticket information.) The Dragon spacecraft Endeavour that docked with the International Space Station early this morning delivered four new crew members and four children's books. One of them, Deborah Lee Rose's alphabet book, "Astronauts Zoom!," is now figuratively and literally out of this world. The other three found-in-space books are: - "Totality!: An Eclipse Guide in Rhyme and Science," by Jeffrey Bennett.
- "Ticket to Space," by Adrienne Romberger.
- "Rocket Says Look Up!" written by Nathan Bryon and illustrated by Dapo Adeola.
Sometime during the next few days and weeks, the astronauts will videotape themselves reading those books and then send the footage back down to Earth for Story Time From Space. The founder, Patricia Tribe, tells me the program is designed to "use literacy to help create awareness and love of STEM." Over the past 10 years, this stellar program has sent about 30 children's books roaring 250 miles above the Earth. Except for a few astronauts and a couple of billionaires, most of us are stuck reading on Earth. But here's your chance to enjoy reading on Middle-earth: The delightfully quirky folks at the Oxford Centre for Fantasy in England are offering a six-day tour of "literature's most iconic fantasy worlds." The program, Walking and Writing in the Shires, offers a chance to improve your writing while wandering around "the landscapes that inspired J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and their fellow Inklings." Once upon a time, Narnia, Middle-earth and Wonderland were inspired here by "standing stones, barrows, willow meads, and castles." Part vacation, part workshop, the program, which runs from July 3 to 8, includes tours of Oxford, visits to Iron Age sites and classes in the Oxford Centre for Fantasy with writers Katherine Langrish, M.G. Harris and Julia Golding. The program — with room and board — starts at about $1,750. If you go, you must send me a photo! (More information)  The new building for the National Library of Israel, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, is nearing completion, but the library's future has become a matter of sharp debate. (Photo by Hagai Agmon-Snir) | The United States isn't the only democracy wrestling with who should control public libraries. In Israel, the people of the book are debating a law that some say threatens the very existence of their renowned National Library. The proposed law would allow the Israeli education minister — an ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — to appoint the majority of the library's board members as well as the board chairman. The government argues this change would increase transparency and public oversight. But critics of the proposal claim it's an attempt to crush the library's independence. More than 100 authors, including the international bestseller David Grossman, have reportedly signed a petition opposing "any political intervention in the choice of library leadership." The stakes are high for Israelis. The National Library was founded in 1892, more than half a century before the modern state of Israel. According to its website, the library exists "to collect, preserve, cultivate and endow the treasures of knowledge, heritage and culture in general, with an emphasis on the Land of Israel, the State of Israel and the Jewish people in particular. " "The greatest treasure of the National Library of Israel is the public trust," board chairman Sallai Meridor said in a statement. "In these days of division and reputational damage to the State of Israel, the intention to harm this important consensus, through seriously harming a national asset that is important to the general public, is puzzling." Israeli journalist Amir Tibon tells me, "The major fear is that this will be used to invoke a political agenda into the library, especially with the current populist sentiment of Netanyahu's government. Things like the promotion of permanent, prominent exhibitions that reflect a political agenda close to the heart of the minister; removal of politically sensitive and controversial materials; and misuse of funds (controlled by the board) for political purposes, are not beyond imagination if this move is completed." In Haaretz, Tibon wrote that the proposal is designed, in part, to punish National Library rector Shai Nitzan. When he was the state prosecutor in 2019, Nitzan "supported indicting Netanyahu for bribery, fraud and breach of trust," Tibon wrote. "Now, the Likud party is determined to take revenge by removing him from his current position." The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which co-owns the library with the state, has reportedly warned that it will withdraw its financial support and about a third of the books if the independence of the National Library is imperiled. It's instructive to notice — here and abroad — how a society's regard for libraries reflects the general health of fundamental democratic principles. Debate over the proposed library law in Israel has been overshadowed by Netanyahu's analogous but even more alarming effort to weaken the independence of the nation's Supreme Court. (Israeli police violently crack down on protest over judicial overhaul.) Libraries may be the canaries in the coal mine of democracy.  "Before I say anything, let me say that whatever I do say was taken out of context," Tina Fey said at the PEN America awards ceremony in New York on Thursday. (Screenshot) | Tina Fey accepted the Mike Nichols Writing for Performance Award at the PEN America Literary Awards ceremony last night. Speaking to an audience of the country's literati, the legendary comedian said, "As a 52-year-old woman who's been living in New York and writing comedy for 30 years, there aren't too many rooms anymore where I feel like a charlatan and a failure. But we found one. It's tonight!" Fey, the first female head writer on "Saturday Night Live," continued along that self-deprecating theme. "'SNL' is the only job in television where you are allowed to write whatever you want every week," she said. "Literally, no one ever tells you 'No,' and you get your check no matter what. And I think we can see that after 47 seasons of this, we can admit that it's a mistake." During the ceremony, which was hosted by former Obama White House aide Kal Penn, 11 other writers were also honored (full list and video). Percival Everett won the top prize, the $75,000 PEN/Jean Stein Award, for "Dr. No," a nihilistic parody of James Bond (review). "For the last 30 years I've had one agent, Melanie Jackson," Everett said as he accepted the prize. "Melanie told me when we first started working together, 'You're never going to make me any money, so just write what you want to write.' And that's it. It was perhaps not well-advised, but I did" (profile). Here are some of the other PEN winners: - Open Book Award: "The Black Period," by Hafizah Augustus Geter.
- Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection: "To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness," by Robin Coste Lewis.
- Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay: "A Left-Handed Woman," by Judith Thurman.
- E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award: "Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey," by Florence Williams (review).
- Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography: "Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm," by Dan Charnas.
- John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction: "The Inheritors: An Intimate Portrait of South Africa's Racial Reckoning," by Eve Fairbanks (review).
 Červená Barva Press | Long ago, I befriended Elizabeth Lund at the Christian Science Monitor, where she was the poetry editor for many years. Later, she wrote a monthly review column for The Washington Post, helping readers find and appreciate new books of poetry. "Un-Silenced," Lund's debut collection, was released earlier this year. It was inspired by a horrific act of violence that struck her family in 2011. During one of their frequent arguments, Lund's aunt was shot and killed by her own husband. He told the police that his wife had threatened to stop cooking. The loss, made even more unbearable by the news coverage in Boston, forced Lund to contend with haunting questions about domestic abuse, the silence that women tolerate and the shame they endure. Poetry eventually helped Lund think about her aunt's life and the culture that women move through. Underwater The challenge was easy then:
dive off the boat at high tide,
swim down, down till you touch
the white sand, then translate
the messages signaled from above. I remember sitting on the bottom,
watching the greenish sun wobble
or trade one shape for another
until the sky became a watercolor map
only my cousin and I could decipher. Each wave made the thin paint
shimmer, another wash of light
rippling across the canvas.
Nothing looked the way it should,
and sounds — like poorly aimed arrows — deflected off the surface.
Yet when she leaned over the side
of the boat, arms waving like seaweed,
I knew what she meant. Stay there.
Go this way. I'm the queen. We didn't need words, not when
an invisible chain ran from boat to sand,
a family secret that flowed through
our veins, an ancient script tattooed
on our fingers, long before we were born. Soon enough my lungs would burn
and I'd kick toward the surface,
reclaiming the world of sound.
Salt never stung, as I recall,
until I broke through the swells.
The sky is mine. I own the sun.
Hold your breath, hold it.
We understood metaphor then. "Underwater" from "Un-Silenced," by Elizabeth Lund (Červená Barva Press, 2023). Copyright © 2023 by Elizabeth Lund. Reprinted with permission of the author. All rights reserved.  Madeline Charles (right) and her friends in the Washington area met to discuss Taylor Jenkins Reid's best-selling novel "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo" on Feb. 28, 2023. (Photo by Madeline Charles) | One of the sad ironies of my job is that I haven't been able to join a book club in decades. Sure, I visit now and then. Last week, via Zoom, I joined my sister-in-law and her friends in Dallas when they talked about Hernan Diaz's "Trust" (rave). But regular participation in a book club — with food! — never seems to work out 1) because I'm a toad and 2) because I'm always in a panic trying to finish two or three books that aren't out yet. Fortunately, my younger daughter has not adapted (all) my soul-killing life imbalances. She's only been back in Washington about six months, but she's already found a great group of literary friends. This week, they talked about one of the most popular recent novels: "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo," by Taylor Jenkins Reid. (It's currently No. 1 on the paperback list, and Reid's "Daisy Jones & The Six" is No. 2.) "Everyone loved how beautiful and flawed her (many) relationships were," Madeline tells me. "We spent the majority of the night talking about our own seven husbands-that-didn't-happen from high school!" Meanwhile, send any questions or comments about the Book Club to ron.charles@washpost.com. You can read last week's issue here. Please tell friends who might enjoy this free newsletter that they can get it every week by clicking here. And remember, you can find all our books coverage, updated every day, here.
Interested in advertising in our bookish newsletter? Contact Michael King at michael.king@washpost.com. | 
Email
No comments:
Post a Comment