"One of America's Preeminent 20th Century Novelists"

"'I don't know yet what this will all add up to, and it no longer matters, because there's no stopping,' he told the New Yorker. 'And this stuff is not going to matter anyway, as we know. So there's no sense even contemplating it, you know? All you want to do is the obvious. Just get it right, and the rest is the human comedy: the evaluations, the lists, the crappy articles, the insults, the praise.'"

Scott Martelle at the Los Angeles Times writes an obit for Philip Roth.

"What a Difference a Year Makes"

"The results in Virginia, where the prospects of gubernatorial candidate Ralph Northam gave Democrats severe heartburn over the last week, were particularly surprising: Not only did Northam coast to victory over Ed Gillespie, a Republican who had embraced the Trump message if not the president himself, but Democrats won legislative races across the Old Dominion, putting control of the House of Delegates—not generally expected to be up for grabs—within Democratic grasp. Bob Marshall, a particularly outspoken anti-LGBT conservative, was defeated by Danica Roem, who becomes the first openly transgender legislator in state and U.S. history."

David A. Graham at The Atlantic reacts to "a surprisingly robust round of victories Tuesday night" for Democrats.

As does Jonathan Chait at New York.

Against the Rocks of a Lifetime

"But each generation must be as forgetful as the last—50 years later, we've barely begun to reckon with the implications of these uprisings, let alone address their root causes. So often, the reactions to these conflicts follow a woefully familiar script: paramilitary policing that only exacerbates the turmoil, sensationalistic media coverage that distorts public understanding, followed at last by a feckless government reports that says much of what the black community already knows and does little of what it needs.

"'The headline hasn’t much changed since 1967 in terms of how we remember those riots,' Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a professor of history, race, and public policy at Harvard, said in an interview. 'The critique from the black community is seen as illegitimate in most arenas of American life, so the longer-term response has been the explicit or veiled message that society was not to blame.'"

Noah Remnick at The Atlantic looks back on the Newark Riot of 1967.

"The Ideas He's Moving to the Mainstream Are All Very Dangerous Ideas"

"I believe that there's a price being paid for not addressing the real cost of the deindustrialization and globalization that has occurred in the United States for the past 35, 40 years, and how it's deeply affected people's lives and deeply hurt people to where they want someone who says they have a solution. And Trump's thing is simple answers to very complex problems. Fallacious answers to very complex problems. And that can be very appealing."

Brian Hiatt interviews Bruce Springsteen in Rolling Stone.

Four Little Poor Prot Jaws Chicken

The New York Times reports the deaths of designer Sergio Rodrigues, historian Michael Katz, Jehovah's Witness Lillian Gobitas Klose, artist Marjorie Strider, restaurateur S. Treutt Cathy, actor Richard Kiel, recording engineer Cosimo Matassa, songwriter Bob Crewe, and politician Ian Paisley.

"Myth-Making Is the Most Valuable Marketing Tool"

"Edison, Lemley writes, 'did not "invent" the light bulb in any meaningful sense.' Electric lighting was long in the works when Edison came on the scene, and his work attracted several patent infringement lawsuits from his contemporaries. 'What Edison really did well,' Lemley argues, 'was commercialize the invention.'"

Alison Griswold at Business Insider reconsiders Thomas Edison.

Drums along the Hudson

"Bob Mould, Hüsker Dü: Maxwell’s is sort of my CBGB. For R.E.M., the Feelies, the Replacements, Hüsker Dü, all the bands of that era—that was our room. Bear in mind, I never played CBGB. In early ’85, I called up and tried to get a gig there. They were like, 'Never heard of you.' Really? You didn’t hear Zen Arcade or New Day Rising? Maybe you should go read The Village Voice or something."

Upon the closing of Maxwell's, New York magazine presents an oral history of the Hoboken nightclub.

Fearsome Harlem Mermaid

The Los Angeles Times runs obits for documentarian Jean Bach, Senator Frank Lautenberg, football player Deacon Jones, farmer Bob Fletcher, film editor William T. Cartwright, and swimmer-actress Esther Williams. 

"The Little Band That Could"

"The larger significance of all this is that, as Mr. Jarnow notes in passing, 'the ideas of modesty and scale around indie music began to spread to other areas of culture.' 'Big Day Coming' doesn't say so outright, but this is a new notion of success: not the old jackpot mentality of the music industry but one aimed at sustainability."

In The Wall Street Journal, Michael Azerrad reviews Jesse Jarnow's Big Day Coming: Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock.

I’m a Bartender; I Do, Like, You Know, Great Things

Unlikely Words blog presents the "Jersey Shore Nickname Generator."

"We Found That Rather Attractive"

"In 1965, Mr. Klein was hired by the Rolling Stones’ young manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, to handle the band’s business affairs. With his working-class New Jersey accent and aggressive, direct negotiating style, Mr. Klein convinced the Stones, as he would many other musicians, that he would be a powerful advocate."

Ben Sisario writes an obit for Allen Klein in The New York Times.

The Mysterious Disappearance of L-Boogie

"There are extroverted divas—Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez, Rihanna—who've mastered the art of peddling persona, pimping everything from clothing lines to perfume to American Express. The music seems almost incidental, just another unit to move. Then, too, there are the pragmatic ones—Mary J. Blige, Jill Scott, and, to a lesser extent, Erykah Badu—who find a way to live within the world of fame, being in it, but not of it. But then there are the sensitive souls—D'Angelo, Maxwell, Lauryn—emotional tenderonis who seem to internalize their art, folks for whom fame is a beast. Lauryn, after receiving a big, wet kiss of affirmation, slammed the door on fame. Went into hiding. Not that we shouldn't have expected it."

Teresa Wiltz in The Root considers the tenth anniversary of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.

Thin-Crust, Thick-Crust, Stuffed, or...?

Adam Kuban delineates the regional types of pizza on Slice.

Waste Management

"Organized crime appears to have a hand in trash collection all over the world, from Naples to Tony Soprano's northern New Jersey. Why are gangsters always hauling garbage?"

Michelle Tsai explains, in Slate.

Full Steam Ahead

"The creation of the age of steam meant many things to America. At the end of the century, historian Henry Adams, in assessing Fulton's feat that day, marked it 'as the beginning of a new era in America--a date which separated the colonial from the independent stage of growth,' for the U.S. was alone in possessing such a vessel and would be for decades. He added that 'the problem of steam navigation, so far as it applied to rivers and harbors, was settled, and for the first time America could consider herself mistress of her vast resources.'"

In the Los Angeles Times, Kirkpatrick Sale marks the two hundredth anniversary of Robert Fulton's steamship trip up the Hudson River.

Panic in Detroit

"There are other signs that Newark, however troubled it remains, has left Detroit behind. While the percent of Newark's population below the poverty line has dropped since 2000, the Motor City's has increased. Newark's unemployment is still nearly double the national rate, but it pales in comparison to Detroit's jobless rate of 13.7 percent. 'Each of these two cities has been the poster child for urban problems in the second half of the 20th century,' says Kenneth T. Jackson, a history professor at Columbia University. 'Newark no longer is. Detroit probably still is.'"

Will Sullivan in U.S. News & World Report looks to see how Newark and Detroit have fared since the 1967 riots.

Jersey Beat

"Yeah, they seemed 'unhip'… but then there was that magical fuzztone guitar riff on 'Let’s Hang On,' one of the most electrifying of its type to blare out of AM radios in the mid-’60s. Bobs Gaudio and Crewe created mini street rock operas on many of those 45s, often about life and love on the poor side of town. Overpowering in their emotionalism, there’s no question that tunes like 'Big Man In Town' had a major influence on fellow Jersey boy Bruce Springsteen, who later titled one of his own tunes 'Walk Like A Man.'"

In Los Angeles CityBeat, Bill Holdship defends the Four Seasons in his review of Jersey Boys.