Free Republic

Writing a novel is hard. Writing one in a month is insane. Unless you are William Faulkner, who wrote As I Lay Dying in six weeks, between the hours of midnight and four in the morning. Indeed, the author himself claimed, “I set out deliberately to write a tour-de-force. Before I ever put pen to paper and set down the first word I knew what the last word would be and almost where the last period would fall.” Faulker said he did not change a word in the end. Some might say Faulkner was touched by the Divine. Lucky him!...

Karmelo Anthony's mother says family has been "under attack," that her daughter has been afraid to sleep in her own bed, and that her husband's "mental health is deteriorating day by day."

A panel of experts gathered in Washington D.C. last week to discuss how their creative industries are coping with technological disruption cited AI as the latest challenge in a decades-long struggle to maintain sustainable careers in the digital era. The panel was part of "The Story Starts With Us," a day-long forum that addressed the threat generative AI poses to copyright law and the creative industries. It was co-hosted by the Association of American Publishers and the Copyright Alliance. The panel was moderated by Alex Reisner, a freelance journalist and contributing writer for The Atlantic who has written extensively about...

Peter Lovesey, the crime novelist, who has died aged 88, was a pioneer of the period whodunnit, as the creator of the Victorian sleuth Sergeant Cribb. Although there had been a few one-off historical mysteries before the advent of Lovesey in the 1970s (including Agatha Christie’s Death Comes as the End, set in Thebes in 2000 BC), he was generally regarded as the first author to set a successful detective series in the past. Sergeant Cribb paved the way for other period detectives such as Ellis Peters’s Brother Cadfael, Lindsey Davis’s Falco and C J Sansom’s Shardlake. The sub-genre now...

copacetic adjective co·​pa·​cet·​ic ˌkō-pə-ˈse-tik variants or less commonly copasetic or copesetic Synonyms of copacetic : very satisfactory And his smile told him that everything was copacetic. —Robert Bloch Did you know? If you’re living the life of Riley, strolling along easy street, or wallowing in hog heaven, your circumstances may be described as copacetic. A word of obscure origin, copacetic has for over a century satisfied those who’ve had a hankering to describe that which is hunky-dory or otherwise completely satisfactory. (If "of obscure origin" leaves you feeling less than copacetic, the note here will undoubtedly remedy that.) Life isn’t...

WASHINGTON—Just days after Kristi Noem took office as President Trump’s head of Homeland Security, she accompanied U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials on a predawn raid of several neighborhoods in New York City. “Live this AM from NYC. I’m on it,” she posted on Jan. 28 at 4:43 a.m. on X, with a photo of herself sporting an ICE baseball cap and getting into a car. The problem: The raid was still ongoing when Noem posted about it, undercutting the element of surprise, according to people familiar with the operation. Noem’s handling of that early raid was emblematic of the...

In 2000, I published a book called “Rules for Aging,” a sort of how-to guide for navigating the later years of one’s life. I was 60 at the time and thought that I knew a thing or two about being old. Twenty-five years later, I just finished a sequel, which reflects my advice for growing very, very old. (I have been doing a lot of that lately.) It took me 85 years to learn these things, but I believe they’re applicable at any age. 1. Nobody’s thinking about you. It was true 25 years ago, and it’s true today. Nobody...

The time has come to cancel or move the 2025 Seattle Worldcon. And to cancel or move the 2026 Los Angeles Worldcon. It has to be done, in order to honor a century-old tradition of science fiction. From its beginnings as a recognized genre in 1926, science fiction has warmly embraced writers and readers from around the world. Hugo Gernsback happily published letters from foreign readers in his magazines and featured stories by several foreign authors. When he established the Science Fiction League in 1934, he included chapters in other nations. The first major science fiction convention in 1939 was...

On the exact 100th anniversary of the publication date of “The Great Gatsby,” the Library of Congress is producing a full reading of the novel, livestreamed from our Thomas Jefferson building on Capitol Hill. Be an old sport and join us in-person or online to experience this classic American novel which entered the public domain in 2021.

The Trump administration has sacked a senior NATO official who was recommended by a conservative research group to be fired as part of a broader effort to purge wokeness from the Pentagon. Navy Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield, the only woman on NATO’s military committee, was dismissed from the alliance over the weekend without explanation, according to multiple reports. She is one of only a handful of female Navy three-star officers and was the first woman to lead the Naval War College, a job she held until 2023. Chatfield reportedly got a call from Adm. Christopher Grady, the acting chairman of...

So last week, the word was out that Netflix is playing host to a reboot of “The Chronicles of Narnia.” On top of that, talks are apparently in the works to have none other than Meryl Streep voice Aslan. Yes, they are coming for Narnia in the same way they came for “Star Wars” and “The Lord of the Rings.” A galaxy far, far, away is not safe, nor is Middle Earth; why should Narnia be sacrosanct? Deadline reports:In the novels, Aslan is a talking lion who serves as Narnia’s guardian and a guide for the human children. Generally portrayed...

Several Columbia University students have chained themselves to a gate to protest Mahmoud Khalil's detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The students began protesting outside Columbia University's St. Paul’s Chapel on Wednesday afternoon, demanding that the institution release the names of the trustees "who gave Mahmoud Khalil’s name to ICE." The Columbia Palestine Solidarity Committee wrote on X that "We will not leave until our demand is met." "FREE MAHMOUD KHALIL. NAME THE TRUSTEE. Jewish students will not leave. They will remain chained to the campus gates until @Columbia University is held accountable. WHO REPORTED MAHMOUD TO ICE?" the...

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, an MSNBC contributor and staunch critic of President Trump, said he’s quitting after owner Jeff Bezos’ “significant shift” in the paper’s mission — joining an exodus of journalists at the beleaguered broadsheet. “The announced ‘significant shift’ in our section’s mission has spurred me to decide that it’s time for my next chapter,” Robinson announced in a memo to fellow staffers on Thursday. “I wish nothing but the very best for the paper and for all of you. I won’t be a stranger, and I’ll be reading your unparalleled work every single day.” Bezos, the billionaire...

He became famous for his love affairs, but Casanova was also a writer, diplomat and spy. Born in Venice 300 years ago, his name still resonates around the world. Giacomo Girolamo Casanova admires his tall, slender figure in the gold-trimmed mirror as he adjusts his wig. Everything needs to be perfect as his latest lover is on her way. Oysters, venison and champagne are ready. The beauty Casanova is waiting for is enchanted by the setting. After dinner, the seducer urges her into the bedroom, where they indulge in a night of lovemaking. "Feeling that I was born for the...

Former President Barack Obama reportedly advocated against Democrats nominating Vice President Kamala Harris in the wake of President Joe Biden dropping out of the 2024 presidential election — because Obama didn’t think Harris could win, according to an upcoming book. The 44th president reportedly argued for an open convention rather than anointing Harris as the nominee after Biden’s shocking drop-out, despite her having support from other Democrats, according to reporter Jonathan Allen, co-author of “FIGHT: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House.” “President Obama absolutely did not think that Joe Biden should continue, according to our sources close to...

In Bad Law, Elie Mystal argues that our country's laws on immigration, abortion and voting rights don't reflect the will of most Americans, and we'd be better off abolishing them and starting over. This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley. My guest today, legal scholar Elie Mystal, says if it were up to him, every law passed before 1965 would be deemed unconstitutional. From his view, before the Voting Rights Act, the U.S. was basically an apartheid state. Mystal's new book, "Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America," mixes humor with deep analysis to argue that our laws...

College acceptance letters are rolling in — and, suddenly, some applicants don’t even want to hear from Columbia. An admissions consultant who helped 10 clients get accepted to the Ivy League school’s Class of ’29 told The Post that not a single one plans to attend. “This would not have been the case three years ago,” Christopher Rim said. “The actual brand has been tarnished.” As for September’s incoming freshman class, Rim said: “I think it’s going to be the students who didn’t get in anywhere else.” This comes as the school has mishandled pro-Palestinian protests and the Trump administration...

He passed away on SaturdayAWARD-winning Irish writer Ken Bruen has died at the age of 74. The Galway crime writer published more than 50 pieces of work and is best known for his Jack Taylor novels. Most notably, he wont the prestigious Shamus Award for Best Crime Novel of the year. Nine of Bruen's novels were adapted into a long-running TV series in 2010, starring Iain Glen and Killian Scott. Bruen passed away on Saturday at University Hospital Galway. He was born in 1951 in Galway before studying in Gormanstown College in Co Meath. He went on to study at...

Today I would like to highlight the release of a book written by Charles A. Goodrich: Great Events in the History of North and South America https://librivox.org/great-events-in-the-history-of-north-and-south-america-by-charles-goodrich/This book ought to be highly useful for home schoolers, it is nearly 90 sections of audio covering a much more generalized education than a deep-dive into one single person or historical event. Many of the audio sections are short in length in the 5-10 minute range, and while the book mentions both North America and South America, 75%~ of the book is North America and almost half of it is the American Revolution...

Amazon MGM reported to pay Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson $1 billion to take over full creative control of James Bond. As The James Bond Dossier reported yesterday Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson are to step down from 007, leaving Amazon to chart the course for the franchise. What wasn’t known until now was the price tag. Amazon, having already spent $8.5 billion acquiring MGM, has had to invest another $1 billion to remove the final obstacle—Broccoli and Wilson’s creative control. For over sixty years, the Broccoli name has been synonymous with Bond. Wilson, now 83, had long...