Reviews and News:

Did Bob Dylan plagiarize from Spark Notes in Nobel lecture? "In Dylan's recounting, a 'Quaker pacifist priest' tells Flask, the third mate, 'Some men who receive injuries are led to God, others are led to bitterness.' No such line appears anywhere in Herman Melville's novel. However, SparkNotes' character list describes the preacher using similar phrasing, as [someone whose trials have led him toward God rather than bitterness.' Following up on this strange echo, I began delving into the two texts side by side and found that many lines Dylan used throughout his Nobel discussion of Moby-Dick appear to have been cribbed even more directly from the site."

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Library of Congress appoints Tracy K. Smith as Poet Laureate.

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What was the most visited museum last year? It wasn't the Louvre.

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Painting from Scott expedition discovered in Antarctica.

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Christian Lorentzen talks to Michel Houellebecq about his photographs, the French elections, and smoking: "When he learned I also smoked he became animated in a way that none of my questions about his photographs, his novels, or politics in France, Europe, and America had made him. 'The prohibition doesn't work!' he said. As Houellebecq, our translator O., and I walked to the elevator, he said that in California he hadn't met anyone who smoked. I told him there they were all preoccupied with health and activities like yoga. He said, 'Nobody will make us do yoga.'"

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Remembering the Falklands War: "For Thatcher, the Falklands represented a two-front war — a battle within her own cabinet to determine the British response, and a contest with Britain's closest ally, the United States, whose interests in the region clashed with those of Great Britain. A loss on either front would have toppled her government. How Thatcher confronted and overcame these challenges offers a rebuke to defeatism and a model of statesmanship in an age of debased and dysfunctional leadership."

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Adam Kirsch writes in defense of critics.

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Rare coloring book discovered in botanical garden. (HT: Aaron Belz)

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Essay of the Day:

In Outside, Jay Bouchard writes about the disappearance of the iconic Hillary Step:

"American climbers Garrett Madison and Ben Jones, both of whom summited Everest in the final weeks of May, tell Outside that the Hillary Step has been significantly altered. Their revelations bring clarity to a debate that left the mountaineering world wondering whether or not Everest's most iconic feature still existed.

"The Hillary Step, which is located at an elevation of 28,839 feet, was a near-vertical rock outcropping 200 feet below Everest's summit. It has long been one of the most foreboding obstacles on the mountain's South Col route. Named after Sir Edmund Hillary, who in 1953 used the 39-foot feature to make the first ascent of Everest with Tenzing Norgay, the step was among the most challenging and notorious features on the mountain.

"In its previous form, the step was comprised of four large boulders and several smaller rocks stacked on top of each other. But both Madison and Jones tell Outside that the main boulder—the largest and highest rock in the feature—is gone. Both join other observers in speculating that the boulder was shaken loose during the massive earthquake that hit the region in 2015."

Read the rest.

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Photos: Switzerland's Zero-Star Hotel

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Poem: Atsuro Riley, "Shed"

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