THE TRUST BETWEEN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA AND THE WORKING CLASS IS BROKEN.
America’s working class is struggling with real life issues, including, but not limited to, economic disparity, racism, sexual harassment, abortion, child abuse, homophobia, mental illness, violence, death, lost love and lost friendship. Yet today’s mainstream media does not reflect this reality. The working class is consistently portrayed by mainstream media as narrow minded, rigid conformists to alt-right conservative family values. This is a fundamental disconnect from reality
French finance minister's 'erotic' writing
Bruno Le Maire, the French finance minister (well, ministre de l’Économie, des Finances et de la Souveraineté industrielle et numérique), published a Harlequin-romance in his younger days (under the pseudonym 'Duc William') but it's his latest literary endeavor, the novel Fugue américaine -- see the Gallimard publicity page --, that has attracted a lot of attention and bad press -- so bad that, as Angelique Chrisafis reports in The Guardian, only hours after its publication, "the credit ratings agency Fitch downgraded the country’s debt worthiness last week".
Okay, they probably didn't downgrade it because of the novel .....
See also David Mouriquand's Euronews report on how Senior French politician Bruno Le Maire's latest novel mocked for its erotic content. The piece helpfully quotes the passages in question -- in the original French as well as translation .....
Meanwhile, at The Local.fr they provide an overview of 7 French politicians who have written erotic literature because of course Le Maire isn't the only one to do this sort of thing .....
Pulitzer Prizes
They've announced this year's Pulitzer Prizes.
The Criticism prize went to a book reviewer -- Andrea Long Chu, who writes for New York.
The Fiction prize was shared -- the first time that has ever happened -- by Trust by Hernan Diaz and Demon Copperheadby Hermann Kingsolver; the third finalist was The Immortal King Rao by Vauhini Vara.
Seduced by Story review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Peter Brooks on The Use and Abuse of Narrative, in Seduced by Story, recently out from New York Review Books.