This is one of the most anticipated publishing events of all time, and curiousity has been building. Even inside Random House, only a half dozen employees have been allowed to read The Lost Symbol in its entirety. The book remains so deeply under wraps that we’ve agreed to keep our stockpile under 24-hour-guard in its own chain-link enclosure, with two locks requiring two separate people for entry. –“Dear Da Vinci Code fans,” Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com (via)

Letters written by [T.S.] Eliot when he was a publisher at Faber & Faber reveal for the first time how he risked the wrath of the British authorities to bring out Nightwood, one of the first lesbian novels ever written. Previously unseen correspondence to be displayed at the British Library shows that Eliot thought the 1936 book, by Djuna Barnes, was “the last big thing to be done in our time.” Later diary excerpts from Ted Hughes in the 1960s refer to the poet as “the Guru-in-chief”, describing the older Eliot as a “father figure.” Eliot’s letters to his three-year-old godson, descriptions of his role as a fire warden during the Blitz and stories about his wartime problems with paper and ink shortages all paint a striking new image of a man with a benevolent, compassionate side. –“Eliot Revealed as Defender of Lesbian Fiction,” Paul Bignell, the Independent (via)

RS: Apolitical is a political position, yes, and a dreary one. The choice by a lot of young writers to hide out among dinky, dainty, and even trivial topics—I see it as, at its best, an attempt by young white guys to be anti-hegemonic, unimposing. It relinquishes power—but it also relinquishes the possibility of being engaged with the really interesting and urgent affairs of our time, at least as a writer. The challenge is how can you not be the moralizing, grandstanding beast of the baby boomers but not render yourself totally ineffectual and—the word that comes to mind is miniature. How can you write about the obscure things that give you pleasure with a style flexible enough to come round to look at more urgent matters? Humor matters here, and self-awareness, and the language of persuasion and inclusion rather than hectoring and sermonizing. You don’t have to be a preacher to talk about what matters, and you don’t have to drop the pleasures of style. If you can be passionate about, say, Russian dictionary entries from the early nineteenth century, can you work your way up to the reconstruction of New Orleans? And can you retain some of the elegance and some of the pleasure when you look at big, pressing topics? I think you can. It’s what I’ve tried to do. I still think the revolution is to make the world safe for poetry, meandering, for the frail and vulnerable, the rare and obscure, the impractical and local and small, and I feel that we’ve lost if we don’t practice and celebrate them now, instead of waiting for some ’60s never-neverland of after-the-revolution. And we’ve lost the revolution if we relinquish our full possibilities and powers. –“Rebecca Solnit,” The Believer