 (The National Archives and Records Administration) | The Barack Obama Presidential Library is looking for a director. It sounds like a pretty good gig — with a salary up to $212,000 a year. The director's duties include planning programs and activities for what is the first fully digital presidential library run by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). At a facility in Hoffman Estates, a suburb of Chicago, archivists are scanning and cataloguing millions of nonclassified documents produced during Obama's eight years in the White House. As they work, the material is moved into storage, while the Obama Presidential Library continues to grow online here. So far, the library has been working without a director. The job wasn't even open for applications until Monday. Presumably, NARA was waiting for new National Archivist Colleen Shogan to be sworn in, which finally happened in May after a long and nasty confirmation process. | "Jill Lepore is America's greatest living essayist. No one else can sway so gracefully between the personal and the political."—Fintan O'Toole, author of We Don't Know Ourselves
| | | | | One of the new library director's essential tasks will be to maintain a "close working relationship with the former President's family and serve as primary NARA interface with the Foundation and Obama Presidential Center." Compressed in that bureaucratic bullet point is the vast weirdness of America's presidential library system. (Does every president need a separate library?) Remember the hushed scandal in "The Music Man"? The town owns the library building, but Marian inherited all the books. So it is with our presidential libraries, but without the catchy music: The president's supporters construct the building, but the National Archives owns all the presidential papers. Then the two sides are bound together forever, propagandists and historians. The arrangement has sprinkled monuments of polemical revisionism across the country. Offering scholarship nested in hagiography, each one is a Great Pyramid exalting and hiding the corpse of a pharaoh. (Trump must never get a presidential library.) But Obama has upset that awkward arrangement. The spectacular Obama Presidential Center rising up in Jackson Park, Ill. — at an estimated cost of more than $700 million — will include a museum, public gathering space, a garden, a playground and a branch of the Chicago Public Library but not a presidential library. That part, the real part, the part that used to be considered the essential part of a repository dedicated to preserving the history of a former president, will exist online, accessible everywhere and yet conveniently nowhere. If you'd like to be the director of that, apply here.  (Photo illustration by Ron Charles/The Washington Post) | BREAKING: In late July, I told you about the latest censorship scheme in Texas, the nation's book-banning capital. The cynically named READER Act, signed by Gov. Greg Abbott, demanded that bookstores, online retailers and publishers rate the sexual content of every single title sold to a public school. Yesterday, just hours before the impossibly burdensome READER Act was slated to go into effect, Judge Alan Albright of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas granted a preliminary injunction barring Texas from implementing the law. The plaintiffs, which included bookstore owners, the American Booksellers Association and the Association of American Publishers, issued a joint statement saying, "We are grateful for the Court's swift action in deciding to enjoin this law, in the process preserving the long-established rights of local communities to set their own standards; protecting the constitutionally protected speech of authors, booksellers, publishers and readers; preventing the state government from unlawfully compelling speech on the part of private citizens; and shielding Texas businesses from the imposition of impossibly onerous conditions." The story isn't over yet — the Texas attorney general plans to appeal the injunction — but this is an encouraging chapter. Books to screens (or not) - If you're young or cool, you already know that "One Piece" debuted on Netflix last night. (I'm zero for two.) The eight-episode live-action pirate show is adapted from Eiichiro Oda's wildly popular Japanese manga series that's sold millions since it started in 1997. "But for all that, 'One Piece' has remained relatively obscure among Americans," writes Washington Post reporter Herb Scribner. "Netflix hopes to change that." Everything you need to know about "One Piece."
- An interactive rom-com called "Choose Love" also debuted last night on Netflix (trailer). The movie allows viewers to have a hand in determining the plot. The cast reportedly filmed 16 different endings. (Watch it again!) "Choose Love" isn't based on a particular title, but some of you may remember those Choose Your Own Adventure books that sold hundreds of millions of copies in the 1980s and '90s. A few of you might even remember the romance novel "Consider the Consequences!," by Doris Webster and Mary Alden Hopkins, which launched the interactive genre back in 1930. What's old is new again.
- Filming of all eight episodes of "The Spiderwick Chronicles" was reportedly finished, but, in a last-minute cost-cutting move, Disney Plus has decided not to stream the show. The series, starring Christian Slater, is based on children's fantasy books by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black. Co-producer Paramount hopes to find another buyer who appreciates the show's magic enough to stream it.
 (ACE; Plume) | Bad News, Good News: Warner Bros. has announced that the theatrical release of "Dune: Part 2," starring Timothée Chalamet, will be pushed back from Nov. 3 to March 15, 2024. But — bless the maker and his water! — the release of "The Official 'Dune' Coloring Book" will remain on schedule for Sept. 26. The coloring book, containing 44 intricate line drawings of Arrakis based on Frank Herbert's sci-fi classic, was created by Croatian artist Tomislav Tomic. (Several years ago, he was a co-illustrator for "The Official 'A Game of Thrones' Coloring Book.") Paul Atreides; his father, Duke Leto Atreides; the Reverend Mother; and the Baron, whose actions in the 1984 David Lynch movie made me nauseous — they're all here, waiting for you to bring them to vivid life. And don't be afraid of going over the lines. As Herbert wrote, "Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration." The spice — and the colors — must flow! Speaking of which: Later this month, Ryan Britt will publish, "The Spice Must Flow," a pop-cultural survey of "how 'Dune' transitioned from cult-classic novels to a sci-fi blockbuster." It's a breezy, chatty, sometimes breathless collection of critical riffs, potted histories and Hollywood interviews (Timothée Chalamet is "a special person who makes you feel amazing"). "Dune" fanatics will find plenty of sugar and spice here to tide them over till next spring.  American Library Association President Emily Drabinski. (Photo courtesy of the ALA); background photo of the MLK Jr. Memorial Library in Washington (Ron Charles/The Washington Post) | In last week's newsletter, I referred, in passing, to conservative citizens alarmed about the "Marxist-lesbian president" of the American Library Association. Unfortunately, I wasn't joking about this latest ludicrous moral panic. As part of their relentless attack on books and libraries, right-wing fanatics have grabbed onto a tweet posted last year by Emily Drabinski after she was elected president of the ALA. In the thrill of the moment, Drabinski tweeted, "I just cannot believe that a Marxist lesbian who believes that collective power is possible to build and can be wielded for a better world is the president-elect of @ALALibrary. I am so excited for what we will do together. Solidarity!" Admittedly, Drabinski's tweet — since deleted — demonstrates a breathtaking degree of naiveté about today's contentious cultural climate. But there's no indication that she has anything but the best interests of librarians and readers in mind. Nevertheless, in July, the Montana State Library Commission cut ties with the ALA, claiming, "Our oath of office and resulting duty to the Constitution forbids association with an organization led by a Marxist." Several other red states are also working to sever their library systems from the ALA. The practical impact would be modest. (The ALA provides members discounts on professional publications, managerial resources and insurance.) But, apparently, it's the principle of the thing! Who knows what further abominations might be unleashed by a library organization trying to "build a better world." In Texas, Republicans have been dumping on Drabinski's tweet like Moms for Liberty on a gay penguin. In a move the Texas GOP called "a big victory," State Rep. Brian Harrison (R-Midlothian) successfully lobbied the Texas Library and Archives Commission to withdraw from the ALA. "Texas should be leading the fight against dangerous Marxist ideology," Harrison tweeted, "not subsidizing it with my constituents' hard earned tax dollars." Just wait till somebody tells Harrison that public libraries lend out books for free. A spectre is haunting Texas! And don't imagine that Harrison's paranoia is restricted just to Drabinski. In a fever-dream statement, the representative claimed, "The ALA works against parents by fighting to keep pornographic materials in public libraries." Confronted with this hysteria spreading through GOP state houses, the ALA has chosen to respond to attacks on its president with bland equanimity: "The American Library Association is aware of Texas State Representative Brian Harrison's comments on social media. Regardless of his statement or any decision that follows, ALA remains committed to its longstanding mission to provide essential support, resources, and opportunities for every library and library worker in every state and territory across the nation to help them better serve their communities." Who knows, maybe that'll quell the flames, or maybe nothing could. But I suspect we'll see more anti-book states leaving the ALA this fall. Readers of the nation, unite! You have nothing to lose but your books! _tstmp_1693488640-480-374.jpeg) (Courtesy of Wiley Cash) | The novelist Wiley Cash is selling his desk. Considering his Southern Gothic stories, I'd expect it to come with a drawer full of live rattlesnakes. But there are no drawers. Instead, the desktop is a puddle of black walnut supported by branch-like legs. The whole gorgeous creation looks like it's pining to crawl back to the forest. It was handmade about 10 years ago by a North Carolina artist named John Crumley. Cash tells me that Crumley's father was dying as he made the desk, and it reflects the artist's grief and spiritual energy. You can see more of Crumley's work at his shop, Elemental Footprints. Alas, Cash's home has run out of room for the desk. He's asking $1,750. "I'm a little sad to let it go, but I'm excited to know that another writer might get some mileage on it," he says. Among the many things he's written on this desk are "The Last Ballad" and "When Ghosts Come Home," both of which won Southern Book Prizes for fiction. Delivery is up to the buyer, but Cash will help you load it and even take you out to lunch or dinner. "And," he says, "you'll get to meet my mom." Prospective buyers can reach him at wileycashauthor@gmail.com.  "Pink Chicken Project," by Nonhuman Nonsense (2021), "suggests a way to leave a geological trace of the Anthropocene era by changing the color of the common chicken into pink via a 'gene drive'." (Photo by Sean Davidson/Courtesy of Oscar Salguero) | For many years, book collecting was the pastime of wealthy white men. Not that there's anything wrong with that; indeed, I aspire to be one. But those aristocratic collectors have long exercised an outsized influence on museums and libraries and, consequently, our concept of history. The David Ruggles Prize is one of a handful of contests designed to diversify the field of book collecting. Named in honor of the early American abolitionist who opened America's first Black-owned bookstore, the prize was launched in 2021 "to encourage and support young book collectors of color." For a deep dive on the contest, its founding and its goals, listen to this episode of "Behind the Bookshelves," a podcast from AbeBooks. (AbeBooks is owned by Amazon, whose founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post.) This year's winner of the $1,000 grand prize is Oscar Salguero. He's a Brooklyn-based designer who curates the Interspecies Library, which contains "artists' books focused on alternative interspecies futures." (Don't worry, I didn't know what that meant either.) In a recent interview with Dazed, Salguero explained he was inspired by "the multispecies fabulations of Ursula K. Le Guin ('The Word for World is Forest,' 1972) and the de-anthropocentrism of Donna Haraway ('Staying with the Trouble,' 2016)." He says he coined the term "Interspecies Futures" to describe a "new era of research and how we speculate in fiction to imagine our relationship with animals in the future." The David Ruggles Prize judges said Salguero's 200-book collection is unlike anything they've ever seen. "Frankly, some were caught off guard by the originality of the concept." (More information about the prize and how to apply.)  New commemorative editions of novels by Abdulrazak Gurnah. All three covers feature artwork by the painter Lubaina Himid, who, like Gurnah, was born in Zanzibar. (Riverhead) | "Writing has always been a pleasure," Abdulrazak Gurnah told the Swedish Academy when he accepted the 2021 Nobel Prize in literature. But it's a pleasure complicated by memory and challenged by oppression. After fleeing Tanzania and settling in England as a teenager, Gurnah grew aware of his desire "to write in refusal of the self-assured summaries of people who despised and belittled us." His remarks seem painfully relevant amid the reinvigorated efforts in some parts of the U.S. to bleach Black history and teach the job-training benefits of slavery (story). Last year, The Washington Post named Gurnah's most recent novel, "Afterlives," one of the top 10 books of 2022 (full list). If you're unfamiliar with his remarkable work, this story about East Africans enduring the ravages of German colonialism is a good place to start. Next Tuesday, Riverhead is publishing "Afterlives" in paperback and reissuing two earlier Gurnah classics in commemorative hardback editions: "Desertion" (2005) includes his Nobel acceptance speech (video), and "By the Sea" (2001) includes an essay by Aminatta Forna about the transformative experience of reading Gurnah. "I knew," she says, "this was a writer I could trust."  Ryan Cagle, left, and James Jenkins, right, co-founders of Valancourt Books. (Photo courtesy of the Institute for Justice) | David vs. Goliath. This week, small publishers won a long-running battle against the Copyright Office, which is managed by the Library of Congress. The case involved Valancourt Books, a two-person, home-based business in Virginia that reprints rare and neglected titles. U.S. law requires copyright holders to send the Library of Congress — for free — two copies of every book. Over the years, that rule has meant offering up to the government millions of titles worth untold millions of dollars. In 2018, the Copyright Office sent a letter to Valancourt demanding it send in the required two copies of every one of its books or pay tens of thousands of dollars in fines. But for Valancourt, a print-on-demand publisher, that routine request represented a potentially ruinous financial burden. Valancourt sued. It lost but appealed. On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in Valancourt's favor, concluding that the Copyright Office's "deposit requirement" is "an unconstitutional taking of its property in violation of the Fifth Amendment" (full text). The Appeals Court reached its decision by looking at the history of U.S. publishing. Judge Sri Srinivasan wrote that as far back as 1790 "the benefits of copyright were intimately tied to mandatory deposit, and authors had to deposit works to either obtain or maintain copyright and its related benefits." In the 20th century, though, the law evolved to confer protection the moment a work was published with a copyright notice. And yet the "deposit requirement" persisted, becoming, the judge wrote, "a burden untethered to any benefit." No more. A statement from the Institute for Justice, which represented Valancourt, said this week's ruling "affirms the basic principle that the government can't take your stuff just because you're doing something useful like publishing books." At the very least, this decision should prod the Copyright Office to speed up a transition toward electronic filing and away from physical books (which it has no room for anyhow). But the real need is for Congress to overhaul America's multiply-patched, barnacle-encrusted copyright law. And hurry. The Copyright Office is currently studying the implications of generative artificial intelligence. The future is now. Members of the public may submit comments here.  (Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.) | Speaking of copyright law, Edgar Rice Burroughs was born on this day in 1875. He would soon be beating his chest and bellowing, "Me make this!" Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan, became one of the first authors to incorporate himself. That clever arrangement, combined with traditional copyright protection, has enabled Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. to swing through the creative canopy defending the Great White Ape from threats more terrifying than lions and crocodiles — that is, imitation and appropriation. In a celebrated case 30 years ago, ERB Inc. filed a $1 million copyright infringement suit against Vogue, claiming that the magazine's photo essay on Tarzan and Jane imperiled the characters' "wholesome" image. (Me Tarzan, You Lawyer.) These days, the copyrights on the earliest Tarzan books have expired, leaving those stories without even a loincloth of coverage (details). But ERB Inc. retains the trademark on Tarzan, and that legal quicksand has allowed the company to remain King of the Jungle. Later this month at the Tarzana International Film Festival (Sept. 29-Oct.1), ERB Inc. will be celebrated for its century of popular books, comics, movies and television shows. (A look back at how Tarzan swung into immortality.) There's no stopping this he-man. The company has more movies and TV productions in the works and is actively "seeking more license agreements." It's also in the process of republishing "a canonical series" of all 80 of Burroughs's original books. For a guy who's never mastered personal pronouns, Tarzan remains miraculously good at keeping himself in the limelight.  (Ecco) | America's low unemployment rate masks the plight of millions of people barely treading water in this economy. The poems in Edgar Kunz's new collection, "Fixer," offer an arresting vision of what life is like for adults shacking up with multiple roommates, struggling with depression, even volunteering to rate vegetable dips just to make rent money. That sounds grim — and it is — but the collection is buoyed by Kunz's wry wit, as in this poem that captures the anxiety so many of us feel about the impending irrelevance of human labor. (AI chatbots are coming for high-paid jobs.) WillRobotsTakeMyJob.com The About page tells us
half of all human
employment is susceptible:
forklift operators, retail clerks
and manicurists. I am not
any of those things, but I am
not comforted. For each
occupation, the site assigns
an automation risk score.
Car salesman: ninety-six.
Umpire-slash-referee:
ninety-four. Each score
has been assigned a cutesy
translation — anything above
ninety: "You are doomed!"
The data scientists
who run the site deployed,
they say, a machine-learning
algorithm to calculate
the odds. The robots, then,
are making it clear exactly
which jobs they will take.
They assess each
according to the qualities
required: finger dexterity,
social perceptiveness,
originality, persuasion.
I am surprised to find
that the qualities I think of
as distinctly human
pose little challenge:
the robots are confident
in their ability to perceive,
to persuade. I click away
and click back, distracted.
I check my phone. The site
assumes a horizon
of twenty years. The AC
rumbles on as scheduled.
Something in the house dings. From "Fixer: Poems," by Edgar Kunz. Copyright © 2023 by Edgar Kunz. Excerpted by permission of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.  Ron and Dawn Charles at Tivoli's Astounding Magic Supply Co. in Washington. (Ron Charles/The Washington Post) | Last Saturday, Dawn and I dropped in on the grand reopening of Tivoli's Astounding Magic Supply Co. in Washington. The store is a clever front for 826DC, the local branch of 826 National, which offers free expository and creative writing instruction for kids. (I'm a volunteer consultant.) Each year, 826DC partners with a public school to produce an anthology of children's writings. The books, which are beautifully designed and professionally illustrated, remain for sale in the Magic Shop. On Saturday, while Dawn and I were picking out an 826DC T-shirt, a little boy flew up the stairs, ran over to the shelf and yelled, "I'M IN THIS BOOK!" Honestly, it doesn't get any better than that. Meanwhile, send any questions to ron.charles@washpost.com. You can read last week's issue of the newsletter here. 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. | 
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