The Perfect Prose of a Joan Didion Photo Caption

Brian Dillon writes about a photo caption written by Joan Didion in the August 1, 1965, issue of American Vogue, when she was a staffer at the magazine, and discrepancies between the printed caption and how Didion later remembered it.

2d

Freedom Day, 1963: A Lost Interview with James Baldwin

Leslie J. Freeman introduces an interview conducted by her aunt Fern Marja Eckman with James Baldwin and his brother David, about their part in a Black voter-registration drive in Selma, Alabama, in October, 1963.

2d

Why We Keep Reinventing Abraham Lincoln

From Honest Abe to Killer Lincoln, revisionist biographers have given us countless perspectives on the Civil War President, Adam Gopnik writes. Is there a version that’s true to Lincoln’s time and attuned to ours?

3d

Briefly Noted Book Reviews

“The Erratics,” “Deep Delta Justice,” “A Country for Dying,” and “Owed.”

3d

Lorrie Moore on Bearing Witness to Suffering

Deborah Treisman interviews the author Lorrie Moore about “Face Time,” her story from the September 28, 2020, issue of The New Yorker.

3d

Poems That Map the Urges of Private and Political Space

New collections by Henri Cole and Eduardo C. Corral take on everyday melancholy and national emergency, exposing the constraints that govern our desires, Dan Chiasson writes.

3d

Sunday Reading: The World of Alex Ross

From The New Yorker’s archive: a selection of features and criticism by Alex Ross.

4d

The 2020 National Book Awards Longlist: Fiction

The New Yorker announces the National Book Awards longlist for Fiction, including Brit Bennett’s “The Vanishing Half,” Douglas Stuart’s “Shuggie Bain,” Charles Yu’s “Interior Chinatown,” Deesha Philyaw’s “The Secret Lives of Church Ladies,” Rumaan Alam’s “Leave the World Behind,” and Megha Majumdar’s “A Burning.”

6d

The 2020 National Book Awards Longlist: Nonfiction

The New Yorker announces the National Book Awards longlist for Nonfiction, including Michelle Bowdler’s “Is Rape a Crime?,” Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s “The Undocumented Americans,” Les Payne’s “The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X,” and Jill Lepore’s “If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future.”

1w

Roger Angell Turns One Hundred

From The New Yorker’s archive: a selection of pieces by Roger Angell, who celebrates his hundredth birthday this week.

1w