John Updike comments on elections in 2008

Imagining how Rabbit would vote, Updike said that Obama seemed to be "more free" as a candidate.  He was interviewed by Sam Tenenhaus of the New York Times.  Updike mentioned that his father had voted for FDR.

George Orwell on Writing

In September 2006, All Things Considered invited Lawrence Wright to talk about Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language" (1946).

The essay is available on-line in a number of places.

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit

When politics and librarians bushly mix. . .

Curtis Sittenfeld's novel American Wife (2008) was reviewed by Joyce Carol Oates in the New York Times (August 29, 2008).  The novel, writes Oates, is "conspicuously modeled after the life of Laura Bush as recorded in Ann Gerhart's biography The Perfect Wife: The Life and Choices of Laura Bush (2004)." 

Some readers may be disappointed: this is not political satire, with "very little that is political or even historical" (Oates).

You can read the first chapter here.