Susan Taubes’ denunciation of male chauvinism: the extra in the Corriere.it App

In his first and only novel divorcesSusan Taubes (1928 – 1969), first woman to obtain a doctorate from Harvard in the history and philosophy of religion, who taught at Columbia University, denounced the machismo of educated New Yorkers. The incipit of the book is the Theme of the Day, the digital-only extra of the “La Lettura” App. «Divorzi», which arrives on Tuesday 7 March in the Fazi bookshop (translation by Giuseppina Oneto, pp. 322, euro 19) was released in 1969; shortly after the scholar and writer killed herself. Patrizia Violi writes about the novel in the insert, on newsstands and in the digital edition.

The «La Lettura» app for smartphones and tablets (downloadable from the App Store and Google Play) offers subscribers a preview of the new issue on Saturday, the archive with all the issues since 2011 and the Theme of the Day, a daily extra digital only. Subscribing costs 3.99 euros per month or 39.99 per year, with one week free. The subscription can also be subscribed from the desktop starting from this page. For subscribers, the contents are also visible from PCs and Macs starting from their Profile page. Furthermore, a one-year subscription to the App can be given as a gift via the web from here or by purchasing a Gift Card in Librerie.coop.

In the «Themes» section of the App you can also read other insights, such as the one by Ida Bozzi dedicated to children’s stories about artificial intelligence; or that of Giulia Ziino, sui classics reinterpreted by modern illustrators. These two focuses are an extension of the new number, the fourth, of “la Lettura delle bambini”, the cultural supplement designed for the little ones, available on newsstands and in the same App, together with “la Lettura”.

Among the Themes, also that of Ciaj Rocchi and Matteo Demonte, illustrators, videographers and comics authors: in the digital extra they tell the genesis of the graphic novel created for «la Lettura» #588, available on newsstands and in the App of the supplement. The table concerns the feat of Boeing 314, better known as Clipper, who was flying the San Francisco-Auckland route on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor took place and was forced to return to New York following an alternative, longer route: the flight touched the waters of five continents, it stopped in twelve countries and lasted a month and four days. In total, there were 209 flight hours and 50,694 kilometres. Here you can also see the animated version of the table.

In «the Reading», they are many topics, debates and insights concerning current affairs, starting with the war. The Books section offers five special pages in Book Pride, the independent publishing fair which will be in Milan from Friday 10 to Sunday 12 March, and opens with an interview with one of the guests of the Milanese fair, the Ukrainian writer Yuri Andrukhovych, who replies to Alessia Rastelli on the possible developments of the conflict, the need for Western aid, Putin’s reaction. At the fair the writer will present his novel Perversion (in bookstores from March 16, Del Vecchio Editore), released in Ukrainian in 1996, a story inspired by Andrukhovych’s first visit to Western Europe after the fall of the USSR.

Another Book Pride guest with a particular look at the contemporary world is the Bulgarian Georgi Gospodinov, European Strega Prize in 2021 with Chrono-refuge (Voland) but also author of a poetry collection, Letters to Gaustin and other poems (also published by Voland), of which Simone Innocenti writes in the supplement. Among other authors, the German Lukas Rietschel (Beating fists on the world, Keller) of which Marco Ostoni writes; the Haitian Louis-Philippe Dalembert who alludes in his novel to the killing of George Floyd (Milwaukee Blues, Sellerio), in the article by Igiaba Scego; the Irishman Paul Lynch who narrates the terror and danger of crossing the ocean (Overseas66thand2nd), of which Elisabetta Rosaspina writes.

Also in the Books, the new literary canons that take shape by broadening their horizons. Perhaps by rediscovering a great South African author, Barbara Trapido, only now published in Italy: hers, hers The brother of the famous Jack (HarperCollins) tells us Cristina Taglietti. Another rediscovered story is that of the writer Susan Taubes: Patrizia Violi reconstructs the story of her only book, divorces, from 1969, now proposed by Fazi. Other topics on «Reading»: two conversations touch on high topics of civil and democratic coexistence: on the one hand, the importance of history, of the knowledge of the memory of the past, which historians Fulvio Cammarano, Giorgio Caravale and the political scientist Maurizio Ferrera talk about, in the conversation edited by Antonio Carioti. On the other hand, justice, ideal and real, in a dialogue between the director Davide Livermore, who stages Aeschylus’ Oresteia in Genoa and Turin, and the jurist Gabrio Forti, who confront each other in the debate by Annachiara Sacchi.

Emergencies and open questions emerge in the artists’ work, as in the film Delta by Michele Vannucci, of which Cecilia Bressanelli writes: a journey to the mouth of the river where cinema brings to life stories of poachers and fishermenand where drought is only one, the most recent, of the wounds inflicted by man on nature.