Readers predict the ending of the final season of The Sopranos: “As much as we’ve been trained, by decades of happy endings, to long for some growing and hugging and learning, we all know very well that, given the obvious disgust and disapproval that David Chase and the writers have had for these characters over the years, and given the limited ability of the characters to change or evolve out of their compromised existences and self-centered, unenlightened worldviews, there must be a big, gruesome reality check waiting for the entire odious clan.” (Salon)

Philosopher Ian Hacking discusses autism in the London Review of Books: “Over the past fifteen years everyone has got to know about autism. Autism will figure this year in dozens, maybe hundreds of cheap novels, thrillers and maybe a good book or two, just as multiple personality did fifteen years ago. (Thank goodness that’s gone!) As well as core autism we now have the autistic spectrum. We have Asperger’s. We have ‘high-functioning’ autists. The success of the high-functioning, their foibles and their triumphs, tends to make the general reader think, ah, so that is what autism is like. Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time acts, among other things, as a wonderful means of raising awareness. But life is not always like that. Downers don’t sell unless there is something sensational to tell. There are any number of more or less factual books about any number of subjects to make you feel wretched, but I have never read a book more wrenching than Jeanne-Marie Préfaut’s Maman, pas l’hopital! (1997), written by a woman who murdered her 23-year-old autistic daughter.”

“The German word Dolchstosslegende means roughly, ‘myth of the stab-in-the-back.’ In the June issue of Harper‘s, Kevin Baker has a major article about the history of this peculiar right-wing myth. It’s a long article and well worth reading in full, but here’s a brief summary with some excerpts. The understanding of this myth is, I think, crucial to understanding the origins of the phony culture war, and therefore to understanding the mindset of the American right.

The story of the stab-in-the-back is common in many ancient myths, in which the hero is betrayed by a close friend and companion. The point of this story is usually to convey the importance of the hero: too strong or wise or good to be defeated by his enemies, the hero can only be defeated from within his group of companions. When you regard your nation as heroic, as many Americans do, then similarly it cannot be defeated by external enemies, only by internal ones.

Baker argues,

Since the end of World War II [the myth of the stab-in-the-back] has been the device by which the American right has both revitalized itself and repeatedly avoided responsibility for its own worst blunders. Indeed, the right has distilled its tale of betrayal into a formula: Advocate some momentarily popular but reckless policy. Deny culpability when that policy is exposed as disastrous. Blame the disaster on internal enemies who hate America. Repeat.

Baker takes the reader on a journey through the past century of the myth… ” (The Green Knight weblog)

“Early this year, the Book Review‘s editor, Sam Tanenhaus, sent out a short letter to a couple of hundred prominent writers, critics, editors and other literary sages, asking them to please identify ‘the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years.’ [Read A. O. Scott’s essay. See a list of the judges.] Following are the results.” (New York Times Book Review)

“Physicists struggling to understand how black holes behave in the extra dimensions posited by string theory should turn off their computers and turn on their kitchen faucets, a new study suggests. The objects act just like narrow streams of water that begin to separate into drops.” (New Scientist)