August 31, 2011 | by Sadie Stein
A cultural news roundup.
Novelist and poet Susan Fromberg Schaeffer has died at seventy-one.
Ruth Rendell speaks out on health cuts.
Snape, the dark-horse winner of a Harry Potter popularity contest. This is controversial.
What to read when you’re sick.
P. G. Wodehouse: the movie.
Javier Cercas: “I respect music too much—if I write I write, if I listen I listen.”
Tweeting from beyond the grave?
Samples of Obama’s summer reading.
The most-wanted out-of-print title? Madonna’s Sex.
The first Kashmir Book Festival has been canceled amid fears of violence.
She Loves You: the Beatles and pronoun use.
A. S. Byatt: “I am a profound pessimist both about life and about human relations and about politics and ecology. Humans are inadequate and stupid creatures who sooner or later make a mess, and those who are trying to do good do a lot more damage than those who are muddling along.”
TAGS A.S. Byatt, Harry Potter, Javier Cercas, Kashmir Book Festival, Madonna, P.G. Wodehouse, Ruth Rendell, sex, Snape, Susan Fromberg Shaeffer, The Beatles, Twitter