Books & Fiction: Harold Bloom on Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Left Hand of Darkness”

Plus: how Paul Celan reconceived language; and should America still police the world? View in browser | Update your preferences Page-Turner The Strange Friendships of Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Left Hand of Darkness” The only thing that makes it possible to read and reread the best novels is not knowing what comes next, even though we have read them before. By Harold Bloom Essays & Criticism Books How Paul Celan Reconceived Language for a Post-Holocaust World His poems, now translated into English in their entirety, are an invitation to a new kind of reading. By Ruth Franklin Under Review Should America Still Police the World? Two recent books, by Robert Gates and Patrick Porter, present starkly different visions for the future of the United States’ primacy in world affairs. By Daniel Immerwahr Page-Turner When the Enslaved Went South In the four decades before the Civil War, thousands of fugitive slaves escaped from the U.S. to Mexico. Runaways found both unfamiliar risks and high rewards south of the border. By Alice Baumgartner Books Briefly Noted “Recasting the Vote,” “What Becomes a Legend Most,” “The War of the Poor,” and “The Office of Historical Corrections.” Newsletters Sign Up for The New Yorker’s Daily Humor Newsletter Cartoons and more funny stuff in your in-box. Poetry Poems “We Feel Now a Largeness Coming On” “Do you see how mighty you’ve made us, / all these generations running?” By Tracy K. Smith Poems “Back from the Cannery” “The women at our house worked in the cannery / and, afterward, at home.” By Kirmen Uribe The Writer’s Voice The Writer’s Voice: Fiction from the Magazine Salman Rushdie Reads “The Old Man in the Piazza” The author reads his story from the November 23, 2020, issue of the magazine. More from The New Yorker Annals of Technology The Rise and Fall of Getting Things Done How personal productivity transformed work—and failed to. By Cal Newport Kitchen Notes A French Answer to American Apple Pie Tarte aux pommes includes fruit cooked and not so cooked, pastry the texture of buttered air, and a presentation that’s a gift, like a painting. By Bill Buford This e-mail was sent to you by The New Yorker. To insure delivery, we recommend adding newyorker@newsletters.newyorker.com, to your contacts, while noting that it is a no-reply address. Please send all newsletter feedback to tnyinbox@newyorker.com. For more from The New Yorker, sign up for our newsletters, shop the store, and sign in to newyorker.com, where subscribers always have unlimited access. Contact us with questions. View our Privacy Policy Unsubscribe Copyright © Condé Nast 2020. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.