The Death of the Hatch Job

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The literary world might no longer need to mourn its spurned poet, but it does need to mourn the death of the hatchet job. All too often book reviews feel like an insufferably smug inside job. This isn't just modern happiness either, it's always been agonising for writers. The novelist Anthony Poll famously saw the world as being divided into fans or shits. Even in Roman times, these things could sting.

Russia’s axeing of the Black Sea grain deal reveals a war machine running out of options. We explore how to get the deal back on track. A month-long mystery surrounding China’s absent foreign minister has grown deeper: now his memory is being scrubbed from official websites (10:15). And literary criticism has lost its claws—gaining a newfound civility that is bad for readers (16:37).

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