Master in American Studies, Università di Torino

29/10/2016

Exciting news for all lovers of American literature: "Noting that she might not get 'another half or full decade,' [Morrison] announced, to excited murmurs from the audience, that a new work was underway and shared some lines from the opening section, narrated by a mute."

NEW YORK (AP) — Toni Morrison received a lifetime achievement award Thursday night from the PEN American Center, a ceremony of music and words that ended with a special treat from the guest of honor: An excerpt from a novel...

25/10/2016

And the 2016 Man Booker Prize goes to...The Sellout, by Paul Beatty, the first American author to win the prize in its 48-year history!

14/10/2016

David Remnick on the Bob Dylan Nobel win: "There are novelists who still should win (yes, Mr. Roth, that list begins with you), and there are many others who should have won (Tolstoy, Proust, Joyce, Woolf, Nabokov, Auden, Levi, Achebe, Borges, Baldwin . . . where to stop?), but, for all the foibles of the prize and its selection committee, can we just bask for a little while in this one? The wheel turns and sometimes it stops right on the nose."

For all the foibles of the prize and its selection committee, can we just bask a little while in this one?

28/09/2016

Adam Gopnik on the Presidential Debate: "Struggling to recall what Trump’s ramblings, with their telegraphic simplifications, their abrupt disconnects, and their sudden hallucinations of imaginary figures, reminded me of, I realized that they were exactly like an excerpt from the dying words of the gangster Dutch Schultz after he was shot in a mob hit in Newark, in 1935: 'Please get me up, my friends. . . . No payrolls. No wells. No coupons. That would be entirely out. Pardon me; I forgot I am plaintiff and not defendant. Look out. Look out for him. Please. He owed me money; he owes everyone money.'"

It’s that the things he actually believes are themselves repellent even when coherently presented.

27/09/2016

Didn't have the chance or the possibility to follow the presidential debate last night? Here is a transcript from the National Public Radio (NPR) complete with fact check and comments.

NPR reporters and editors are live annotating Monday night's debate. Read the latest fact check, analysis and context here.

26/09/2016

A look at what's lurking behind the American fascination for guns.
"What a gun represents to me is the liberty that we have here. I am a free American: I can have a gun if I want to."

Two decades ago, photographer Zed Nelson travelled across America for his acclaimed project, Gun Nation. This year, he went back: what’s changed?Watch Zed Nelson’s 30-minute Guardian documentary

17/09/2016

Was it the abolitionists? A comprehensive review of Manisha Sinha's "The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition" (2016). "Abolitionism came in two waves. It had its early origins in the religious conscience of a few Quakers—men like the French-born Philadelphian Anthony Benezet—but it really came to life in the era of the American and Haitian revolutions."

In the epic battle between the forces of slavery and emancipation in the United States, power was on the side of the slaveholders. This much has always been clear, and never more so than now.

16/09/2016

"On May 18, 1927, a man named Andrew Kehoe blew up the school in Bath Township, Mich. Most of the 44 killed were children. It remains the deadliest attack on a school in U.S. history." History is always full of surprises.

A 1927 attack on a school in Bath Township, Michigan killed 44

14/09/2016

The shortlist for the 2016 Man Booker Prize has been announced recently and two American novels are still holding strong: Paul Beatty's "The Sellout" and Ottessa Moshfegh's "Eileen". Keeping our fingers crossed for them.

First 155 novels became 13 and now they have shrunk again: the six books that have been named on the 2016 Man Booker Prize shortlist have, at last, the summit in sight. Sage observers and maybe the writers too will now scrutinise the list for clues as to where the judges will ultimately look for the...

13/09/2016

History is always full of surprises.

A new documentary exposes a seldom acknowledged 1898 massacre, perpetrated by a gang of white supremacist Democrats in North Carolina.

11/09/2016

Moustafa Bayoumi, author of the critically acclaimed "How Does it Feel to be a Problem: Being Young and Arab in America", writing about 9/11 and the 15 years that have passed in the meantime: "If the terrorists turned out to be Muslim, I thought at the time, the future could become very difficult for Muslims in the United States."

This past Labor Day, the United States bombed six different countries. The tragedy’s 15th anniversary is a chance to reflect on how we can change course

11/09/2016

"Speaking in a menacing, devilish growl, Carlin gives voice to a dark part of us that eagerly, and at times almost giddily, consumes the wall-to-wall media coverage that certain kinds of mass-death events generate. 'The only thing I care about is fun. That’s all. Entertainment,' he says. He explains the excitement he feels when watching fatal disasters as a visceral, animal response. The appeal he is making to members of the crowd, as he is getting them to laugh, is to consider this almost reflexive fascination, and to deny even a germ of it in themselves."

Fifteen years after September 11th, Carlin’s material from two performances immediately preceding the attacks is becoming available.