Journalist & critic writing for
@TheEconomist
,
@WSJ
,
@NewYorker
, etc.
Author of SHAKESPEARE WAS A WOMAN & OTHER HERESIES out now from Simon & Schuster
🔥 “PLEASURABLY NAUGHTY”🔥 -
@aaciman
My heretical Shakespeare investigation will be out in paperback from
@SimonBooks
on April 23 (May 23 in UK). It has some new material, including an added epilogue
Huge thanks to everyone who has supported this book
“I thought, ‘If Cervantes were around now, what would his target be?’” I spoke with
@SalmanRushdie
about his new novel, free speech, the fatwa & reality TV (spoiler: he's not a fan)
SHAKESPEARE WAS A WOMAN AND OTHER HERESIES is an irresistible work of literary detection, providing a thrilling investigation into the Shakespeare authorship question.
Available 5/9, learn more:
Honored that my book is being taught in a
@Harvard
history class this semester on historical controversies
And delighted to make a syllabus appearance alongside the great
@kathrynschulz
Very cool course -
Makes me think we really are still childishly intent on seeing our literary icons as secular gods, ethically flawless, instead of admitting that literary genius can and often does sit alongside all sorts of moral ugliness.
Biographers have described Shakespeare’s life as a “jigsaw puzzle for which most of the pieces are missing” & a “man-shaped hole”
I wrote about our obsession with Shakespeare biographies for
@FTMag
brilliant Shakespeare edition
Who was Shakespeare?
Some tragic details I learned in reporting this story: 2/3 of Oklahoma's incarcerated women were sexually or physically abused as children. 70% suffered domestic violence as adults. Experts see their turn to drugs as a product of unresolved trauma.
I spoke with
@EnesKanter
, the
@celtics
new center, who has been labeled a "terrorist" in his native Turkey for his criticism of Erdogan and his association with Gulen.
“It’s such a man thing to want your effigy. That may be a reason why women have been so forgotten.”
I profiled the wonderful and brilliant math pioneer Ingrid Daubechies
Flannery O'Connor in 1964: “You know, I’m an integrationist by principle & a segregationist by taste anyway. I don’t like negroes. They all give me a pain and the more of them I see, the less and less I like them. Particularly the new kind.”
BREAKING: Papers are refusing to run Shakespeare's portrait over concerns that it has 2 left arms, 2 right eyes, a skull of "horrible hydrocephalus development," no neck, an "absurdly small tunic" & a "huge" head that appears to floating on top of the ruff
.
@Nike
is hardly sacrificing shareholder primacy for the sake of social justice. It has made a strategic bet on who its future customer will be. My column on the new
#JustDoIt
campaign featuring
@Kaepernick7
The
@strandbookstore
has made this book a STAFF PICK!! Sitting next to my hero, JM!
I took Malcolm’s writing on literary feuds (The Silent Woman, In the Freud Archives, etc) as my model, structuring the book around a series of interviews.
259 yrs ago this July, a girl captured somewhere between present-day Gambia and Ghana stepped off the Phillis, a slave ship, and onto the docks of Boston Harbor.
I wrote about Phillis Wheatley, America's first Black poet, for
@NewYorker
I'm thrilled to be in (virtual) conversation with the great Mark Rylance
@MarkRylanceInfo
- one of the interviewees in my book w/ some of the most brilliant, nuanced insights into the plays & their authorship of anyone I spoke to.
Please join us June 6!
It's quite striking that Little Women is never included on syllabi. We fetishize American boyhood (Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, Catcher in the Rye), but American girlhood can't be the stuff of Great Literature. Read
@andevers
:
A HAMLET RANT: There's a v silly notion spiraling around the books pgs of various newspapers that the death of Shakespeare's son Hamnet inspired "Hamlet" and that Hamnet=Hamlet. It appears to come from ppl who have never actually read Hamlet, and it's driving me bonkers. So...
I am so proud of the incredible scholarship and investigative work
@ElizWinkler
has done on this masterpiece of a book! Coming to bookshelves this Spring from
@simonschuster
!
For this week's
@TheEconomist
I wrote about Joe Sacco's "Palestine," a stunning comic book series about the lives of Palestinians under occupation, based on Sacco's travels in the West Bank and Gaza Strip
@fantagraphics
Thrilled to see my
@TheAtlantic
essay ‘Was Shakespeare a Woman?’ included in this year’s edition of Best American Essays, edited by the brilliant
@aaciman
I had a great time discussing Shakespeare on
#SignificantOthers
podcast for
@TeamCoco
(This episode is about the authorship question generally, not just the theory of female authorship!)
Listen here:
Why does the poet repeatedly insist in the Sonnets that his identity be “buried” & “forgotten”?
"My name be buried where my body is"...
"I, once gone, to all the world must die"...
I wrote about the sonnets for
@PublishersWkly
Not to make everything about Shakespeare (sorry) but James Joyce was very interested in the authorship question… and appears to have been sympathetic to the Oxfordian theory (?). The Ulysses passages are well-known but it also turns up in Finnegans Wake
DC friends, on Wednesday, I will be discussing SHAKESPEARE WAS A WOMAN & OTHER HERESIES at my beloved
@kramerbooks
in conversation with
@TheBookMaven
I wrote parts of the book in Kramers’ cafe so this one feels extra special. Please join us!
Very funny that an entire book on Shakespeare and Freud neglects to mention that Freud thought “Shakespeare” was the Earl of Oxford
A conscious or unconscious omission?
This is one of my favorite interviews I did this year -- Jonna Mendez, who started out at the CIA in 1966 as a secretary and rose to become the agency's chief of disguise, serving in some of the most hostile spots of the Cold War.
Since Twain is in the discourse, a quick plug for his most criminally under-read work, "Is Shakespeare Dead?", a biting, hilarious satire of Shakespeare biographers, which should come bundled with every Shakespeare biography
Online here --
Bringing une petite hérésie to France... I'm thrilled to be discussing Shakespeare and the authorship debate at the American Library in Paris on June 12. You can RSVP for free tickets here
@amerlibparis
First sighting in the wild!! With a bookstore note saying “So Good!”
I’m so grateful to all the bookstores and booksellers recommending my heretical baby to your readers!!
A featured staff pick at the
@strandbookstore
smack between
@KatyHessel
& Susanna Moore!
The book has now gone into a third printing… thank you to everyone who has read & shared it. It’s been such a joy hearing from readers over the last few weeks. I’m very grateful.
Since it’s the anniversary of Evelyn Waugh’s death, I’m posting the opening of my chapter with Alexander Waugh, who possesses something of his grandfather’s wicked, irreverent wit
I somehow missed that
@PublishersWkly
picked SHAKESPEARE WAS A WOMAN & OTHER HERESIES as a book of the week… thank you!!
“Probing and smart, this is sure to stir up lively debate”
PW Picks: Books of the Week, May 8, 2023
Shocked & saddened by this news.
Chris was the most wonderful editor & mentor. Took me under his wing, gave me opportunities, told me I had what it took. Hard to overstate what that means to a young writer. He loved Updike & old fashioneds. I will miss him
“I’m trying to use my story to tell their story,” says Boston Celtics player
@EnesKanter
of those suffering back in his native Turkey.
His sustained denunciation of Mr. Erdogan has made Mr. Kanter, 27, a wanted man.
via
@WSJ
I studied a glass case displaying Freud’s collection of tiny penis amulets.
“Who do you think dusted them all?” a psychotherapist near me asked.
I wrote about Freud's antiquities for the
@NewYorker
--with thanks to the lovely curators
@FreudMusLondon
My book is out in paperback today in the UK
@simonschusterUK
It has an added epilogue about the problem of “authority gone archaic” (a phrase used by the critic Leonard Tennenhouse to describe A Midsummer Night’s Dream).
And to “Huw Baumgartner,” if that is your name, it matters because scholars are supposed to get history right. Otherwise, WHAT ARE THEY DOING
And obviously ppl care quite a lot, as evidenced by the hysterics
A conversation with SIR MARK RYLANCE
At the
@nypl
53rd St location
Tuesday, April 30th
It’s free but you may want to reserve a spot — tickets are going quickly
See you there!
@53rdStreetNYPL
@MarkRylanceInfo
An excerpt adapted from my book is up today on
@lithub
- It includes a fascinating, little-known trial in which the authorship question came before the courts.
Today we’re announcing our multi-year theme for 2024-26, exploring the often less-explored, and unfortunately, erased and forgotten stories of the women who both influenced Shakespeare during his lifetime and the female-presenting people who have contributed to his legacy.
🧵1/4
11 top execs out at Nike, stock at all time-high this summer. At Wynn Resorts, CEO Steve Wynn resigned after accusations of decades of sexual misconduct, stock returned to pre-scandal level in 3 short months. What is wrong with this picture? via
@WSJ
"a fascinating detective story that combines diligent scholarship with a lively journalistic approach in an attempt to examine the schism from all sides"
Some lovely words in the
@guardian
--
thank you,
@thestephmerritt
!
Happy publication day to SHAKESPEARE WAS A WOMAN AND OTHER HERESIES!
@ElizWinkler
explores how doubting the Bard became a literary taboo in this irresistible work of literary detection.
Learn more:
Discouraged by gender and class expectations from publishing her music during her lifetime, a 19th-century composer is finally emerging from the shadow of her famous brother.
I wrote about the brilliant composer Fanny Mendelssohn for the
@WSJ
The best thing on the Birthplace is still Henry James's ingenious story, inspired by a real-life Birthplace custodian who became consumed by doubts
This edition has a forward by
@MarkRylanceInfo
I reviewed this fascinating collection of Snow White stories from
@Harvard_Press
. The Nazis were obsessed w the Disney film but the fairy tale isn't distinctly German. It crops up all over the world, in countries as disparate as Hungary, Armenia & Sudan.
Interesting to see this breakdown happening, but I also can't sympathize with it at all. How intellectually incurious do you have to be to not care who wrote some of the most influential works of western civilization?
'Did Shakespeare actually write his plays? I don't care!'
The RSC's artistic director Gregory Doran on the authorship debate, The Boy in the Dress' West End transfer and Hilary Mantel bringing her new book to the stage
Before He Was George Orwell, He Was Eric Blair, Police Officer
The new Theroux novel imagining Orwell's formative years in Burma--before he became Orwell--is very good!
An article in Critical Survey arguing that "Shakespeare" was identified as the pen name of the Earl of Oxford in 1598 (in a book called Palladis Tamia by Francis Meres)
Fascinating to see this research slowly making its way into mainstream journals