The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.
"The Anarchist Cookbook should go quietly and immediately out of print," William Powell, the book's author, tells NBC. The book, which contains instructions for making weapons and explosives, was apparently read by 18-year-old Karl Pierson before he opened fire at a high school in Colorado last week. Powell has long since renounced the methods endorsed in the book, calling it "a misguided product of my adolescent anger at the prospect of being drafted and sent to Vietnam to fight in a war that I did not believe in." Powell's publisher holds the copyright, and told NBC that he does not intend to let it go out of print.
The (extremely) short story writer Lydia Davis celebrates the (also very) short story writer Osama Alomar, who is an exile from Syria: "While some of the tales are explicitly angry or bitter, others are ironically detached, and still others make their point with a piece of sly wit, one of these being The Pride of the Garbage, in which a bag loaded with garbage, in its vainglory, is satisfied only if it is placed on the very top of the heap of bags bound for the dump."
At McSweeney's, gives her recipe for Nietzsche's Angel Food Cake: "Ecstatically whip, as if possessed by a storm-wind of freedom, 1-1/2 cups of excellent egg whites with 1/4 tsp. salt and 1-1/2 tsp. cream of tartar. Continue until peaks are as if raised to their own heights and given wings in a fine air, a robust air."
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. 9(MDEwMTk5OTQ0MDEzNDkxMDYyMDQ2MjdiMw004))
