Monthly Archives: June 2023

White the current debt ceiling crisis unfolds, we are reminded again of the differences of the two main political parties.

Led by the Republican Speaker of the House, the members of his party seem to be following President Reagan, Steve Bannon, and Ayn Rand/Rand Paul in wanting to destroy the "administrative state" -- the community our nation has as one nation. Many want a default

A fundamental thread of the current GOP seems intent on emasculating the federal government and, yes, destroying the mutual care that we practice and the federal government represents. This GOP tribe would prefer reducing citizen rights throughout the country to states rights. Inevitably, some states will foster and buy greed, prejudice, and exclusion to their heart's content. The Conservative Supreme Courts decision to gut the Civil Rights Act demonstrates the effective deep ideological passion used to destroy both the government and citizens rights.

Big business controls so much money and spends lavishly on their lobbyists, yet maintains the federal government is the enemy. It is a deep lie that the government is the enemy, planted deliberately by former Justice Powell, Newt Gingrich, and Paul Weyrich. This lie has successfully persuaded many poorly educated representatives and senators to help commerce in place of serving their constituents common good. The lie started with the effective falsehood by Justice Powell that Business is under attack. That lie is a GOP principle.

Against this destructiveness, deregulation, control of individuals and greed, the Democrat Party fosters our natural impulse mutual helping one another. The Democrat Party wants to rein in banks, tax non-tax-paying businesses and their billionaires for their share and help you and me with less money to deal with our common problems. The truth is: When will Republicans wake up instead of blaming Democrats for being "woke"?

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LETTER: When will Republicans wake up? - The Pantagraph

After years of toiling against a culture that refused to recognize or celebrate the value of our hero's unique gifts, there was a possible breakthrough. A chance was seized. A microphone was commandeered. The nation's airwaves were unexpectedly filled with a message about the value of selfishness, individuality, and ambition.

I'm talking, of course, about the finale ofThe Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which concluded its five-season run on Amazon Prime last week.

"I want a big life. I want to experience everything. I want to break every single rule there is," Miriam "Midge" Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan) said, near the end of her final set, in a moment that effectively summed up the character's first principles over the course of the show's arc. "They say ambition is an unattractive trait in a womanmaybe. But you know what's really unattractive? Waiting around for something to happen. Staring out a window, thinking the life you should be living is out there somewhere, but not being willing to open the door and go out there and get it, even if someone tells you you can't."

It was a bit more terse than another famous speech delivered at the climax of a story that celebrates many of the same themes. Or perhaps it was a more verbose version of Howard Roark's famous declaration in The Fountainhead,after being informed that it's unlikely anyone will let him design buildings in the way he wanted: "That's not the point," he said. "The point is, who will stop me?"

Over the course of five seasons, no one stopped Midge Maisel. Not when she stormed onto the stage at New York City's famous Gaslight Cafe in a bathrobe to deliver her first impromptu set after discovering her husband's infidelity in the show's premiere. Not when she similarly broke away from an interview to deliver that monologue in the finale. It wasn't all smooth sailing in betweenindeed, one of the show's strengths was its willingness to let Midge struggle, even seem to fail at timesbut that's not the point, is it? The point is, no one stopped her.

More than most other shows on television,Mrs. Maisel celebrated the selfishness that is essential to success in comedy and show business at large. Midge was always a selfish character, but the show's final season leaned into that trait in a refreshing way. Rather than having her grow to be a better mother or romantic partner, or learn some self-sacrificial lesson about helping others succeed, the showrunners (Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino) put the spotlight on Midge's defining trait, while also acknowledging the trade-offs that come with it.

The final season culminated with Midge getting her long-sought-after breaka four-minute set on The Gordon Ford Show, which we're told is the highest-rated late-night program on television in the show's fictional version of 1962 Americaand used various flash-forwards to leave no doubt that it was, in fact, the springboard to a wildly successful career in show business. She got there by breaking the rules and by demanding to be first in line, yes, but also by refusing to compromise on who she was.

The show's celebration of selfishness extended beyond Midge herself and did so in a way that fits with Ayn Rand's conception of the term. While there is nothing wrongand plenty rightabout putting one's own needs first, Rand emphasized that selfishness also indicated moral first principles: Being selfish means, essentially, being true to one's self and refusing to subvert the individual to the desires of others.

Throughout the show, Midge repeatedly encountered supposedly successful people whose showbiz fame was predicated on committing the Randian cardinal sin of subverting their individualism for mass appeal. First and most apparent was Sophie Lennon (Jane Lynch), a snooty Manhattanite who donned a fake accent and fat suit to perform stand-up as a crass housewife from Queens. There was also Shy Baldwin (Leroy McClain), the closeted homosexual who performed as a womanizing pop singer. Finally, there was Ford, the late-night host with a fake marriage who didn't write his own jokes or have as much creative control over his own show as he liked to think. As the lies those characters lived were peeled back, Midge (and the audience) discovered them to beto varying degreespathetic, tragic, and pitiable.

Midge steadfastly refused to play that game, announcing early on that she would achieve fame on her own terms. Her comedy act was a reflection of that perspective, rooted as it was in the lived experience of a divorced Jewish mother from the Upper West Side. Her manager Susie Myerson (Alex Borstein) and real-life comic Lenny Bruce (Luke Kirby), fellow outsiders who disdained the phoniness of their industry, stood alone in recognizing and encouraging Midge's unique talent.

To be sure, there was plenty of the traditional form of selfishness in Midge's character too. Her big break came after she persuaded Myerson to apply a particularly nasty form of leverage over Ford so he would break his personal rule against allowing his writers to appear as guests on his show (which is, it should be said, a very reasonable rule). By doing so, she blatantly stepped to the front of the line ahead of other comedians who toiled in the obscurity of the writers' room far longer than she did.

But the show left no doubt that she deserved the break when it came. She wasn't just the one writer in Ford's bullpen who found the right leverage to make him break his ruleshe was also the best of the bunch, and therefore the one most deserving of special treatment in the show's Randian-tinged perspective. Her selfishness, in all its forms, was duly rewarded.

Still,Mrs. Maisel also demonstrated that the selfishness necessary for success is not without its trade-offs. In the fifth season's flash-forwards, we learned that Midge's strained and distant relationship with her two children continued even after both reached adulthood. If Midge's success was the result of never compromising on her individualism, then that same character trait naturally made her a poor mother, a role where self-sacrifice is fundamental. Her relationship with her parents was similarly difficult, though one might note that strained or absent family ties only reinforce the similarities between Midge and Rand's heroes, most of whom lack children or relatives who aren't portrayed as losers and leeches.

The dark side of Midge's ambition and selfishness was always part of the show's award-winning formula. Her inability to separate her real life and stage persona cost her friends and opportunities along the waymost prominently getting her canned from a tour as Baldwin's opening act after she inadvertently outed him during a set. There were lessons to be learned, but Midge never abandoned her individuality in order to set things right.

Over its five seasons, Mrs. Maisel veered into other libertarian-adjacent themes, including casting a critical eye toward the obscenity laws that limited free speech in 1950s/'60s New York Cityand which Midge got arrested for violating. The final season dealt in a small way with the tragic end of Bruce's career and placed the blame for his personal decline squarely on the persecution he suffered at the hands of government censors. "I can't step foot in any club east of the Grand Canyon," he lamented at the start of the final episode. Offered Myerson's help to get back on top, he selflessly declined, telling her to use her favors on someone else. There's a hint of a moral there.

But the hero and moral center of the show was always Midgeindeed, everything in the show revolved around herwho used her talents and shamelessly seized every favor offered to her. Even in flash-forwards to her later years, we saw her tireless work ethic continue. And while Midge would surely fall short of Rand's ideals about what defines an objectivist herodespite her propensity for delivering diatribes into a microphoneThe Marvelous Mrs. Maiselleft little doubt that she'd never have succeeded without putting herself first.

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'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel' Celebrated Selfishness as a Virtue - Reason

It is not uncommon to blame victims for whatever problems or difficulties they may encounter. Often enough, it involves people who did not comply with police officers commands, never mind that different cops may be shouting out contradictory orders so that the person does not know who to listen to. More recently, Jordan Neely was tragically killed in New York because his strange behavior was threatening to other subway passengers. Luckily, someone stepped in to subdue him, and its just too bad that he lost his life for it. The person who choked him out cannot be blamed; it was all a bad accident, you know.

But lets pull back the lens a bit consider victim-blaming in a more general way.

The conversation starts with Achille Mbembe in Necropolitics (2019) when he discusses how capitalism and the economic imperative of profit-making remade the world system via colonialism and slavery. People were forcibly moved or coerced from the places where they once lived and then ended up being sent to places in order to satisfy demands for labor. They didnt want to move, but were enslaved. They did not want to work in plantation agriculture where monocultures replaced the self-sufficiency of small farmers planting and growing for their family and community, but that was not where the money was. Once moved, those same people are subjected to hatred and racism, as those in new lands argue that you dont belong here. At the same time, no one is allowed to utter the words, Capitalism brought me here.

In Cannibal Capitalism (2022), Nancy Fraser goes through a discussion of how social reproduction in capitalism has a chain effect wherein people from peripheral countries are recruited to provide household care in the developed world so that more privileged women can be allowed the freedom to work and to not be bound by their familial duties. But those caregiving tasks must still be fulfilled, and consequently women are recruited from peripheral countries to be those caregivers, in turn allowing them to send remittances back home, and helping their families back home. Entire economies like the Philippines are set up on this concept, including the broadened need to provide health care for the aged in wealthier countries where the population is at or below replacement rate. Womenmostly womenget work and are paid, all the while destroying their own family units in order to keep the upper classes of capitalist society intact.

So while caregiving becomes a necessity for women who want to work because they are made to feel independent, there is a parallel resentment of those who migrate and seek refugee status to take up those very roles in the heart of the global economic system. Women try to escape their own worlds of poverty and violence, as is currently the case with refugees coming from Central America to the US, but they are hated and scorned for responding to the very demands that capitalism has created. Again, lets not say the name of the system causing this predicament. Lets blame the victims instead.

More broadly than that, we can look at the implications of neoliberalism now spanning 50 years of history. If one were to believe the precepts of Ayn Rand before, Milton Friedman more recently, the effects of capitalism operating under a neoliberal system of accumulation were clear enough. The rich would get immensely richer, there was to be no governmental help for society because capitalism must incentivize individual performance and not compensate those who fail. If people did not survive in this dog-eat-dog environment, they would fail, and they would ultimately die. Their own failures in not being assertive and aggressive enough, made them unsuccessful. Theyre toast, and theyre supposed to be.

Back in the 1980s, sociologist Ulrich Beck talked about Risk Society (1986) and how capitalism in its neoliberal iteration now meant that individual achievement alone determined ones fate. No longer would there be a social safety net to catch those who failed. Presciently, Beck was right. Fortunately, the demise of this safety net has not been as rapid in Europe as it has in other parts of the world, North America included. But the risk is still on us even though the system generates or creates it.

Watching news network a handful of nights ago, there was an extended report about how homelessness had reached epidemic levels, particularly in blue cities where Democratic mayors had not done anything to address the situation. Especially useful in this reporting is that People of Color and/or women are behind the inability to resolve the problem: the mayor of New York is Eric Adams, Brandon Johnson is in Chicago, Los Angeles has Karen Bass, and London Breed is in San Francisco. The implied meaning is clear: they get elected because of this mad desire to support inclusiveness, then fail because they dont know what theyre doing.

What is to be done? In a neoliberal world where any and every action made by government is treated with suspicion, wrath, or both, the answer is, nothing. So in doing nothing, the grand neoliberal vision of a divided world between some winners and many losers is realized. The winners get to celebrate on Mont Pelerin, or maybe its in Davos these days, while the rest of society must navigate around tents and people shooting up fentanyl on the sidewalks of San Francisco. For Rand, Atlas Shrugged because thats how its supposed to be. If you are wealthy, you deserve everything you have.

There are two victims here. First, the homeless and the unwillingness to do anything about helping them involving outlays of money for housing and for health care (both physical and mental) that most people do not have. When it comes to refugees desperate to leave where they came from due to circumstances beyond their control, those problems lie with the governments and the states that they came from. Their labor is needed, and yet few people are willing to take them in. One can only wonder what will happen when streams of people number in the hundreds of millions once climate change makes certain parts of the planet no longer livable. Do the gates swing open for refugees? Not in a dog-eat-dog world, they dont. Second, the public officials themselves fall victim to criticism because theyre not doing anything. Well, you know what? No one wants them to do anything. Thats neoliberalism for you. But lets not talk about that.

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Blaming the Victim - CounterPunch.org - CounterPunch

A statement issued today and signed by more than 375 computer scientists, academics and business leaders warns of profound risks of artificial intelligence misuse and says the potential problems posed by the technology be given the same urgency as pandemics and nuclear war.

Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war, said the statement issued by the Center for AI Safety, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing AI risk.

The statement caps a flurry of recent calls by AI researchers and companies developing AI-based technologies to impose some form of government regulation on models to prevent them from being misused or creating unintended negative consequences.

Earlier this month, OpenAI LLC Sam Altman told the Senate Judiciary subcommittee that the U.S. government should consider licensing or registration requirements on AI models and that companies developing them should adhere to an appropriate set of safety requirements, including internal and external testing prior to release and publication of evaluation results.

Microsoft Corp. last week called for a set of regulations to be imposed on systems used in critical infrastructure as well as expanded laws clarifying the legal obligations of AI models and labels that make it clear when a computer produces an image or video.

Altman and OpenAI Co-Founder Ilya Sutskever were among the signatories to todays statement. Others include Demis Hassabis, chief executive of Google LLCs DeepMind; Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott; cybersecurity expert Bruce Schneier; and the co-founders of safe AI unicorn Anthropic PBC. Geoffrey Hinton, a Turing Award winner who earlier this month left Google over concerns about AIs potential for misuse, also signed the statement.

The Center for AI Safety sites eight principal risks that are inherent in AI. These include military weaponization, malicious misinformation and enfeeblement, in which humanity loses the ability to self-govern and becomes completely dependent on machines, similar to the scenario portrayed in the film WALL-E.

The center also expresses concerns that highly competent systems could give small groups of people too much power, exhibit unexplainable behavior and even intentionally deceive humans.

All this activity comes after the public release last November of OpenAIs ChatGPT intelligent chatbot. The uncanny humanlike interactive capabilities of the generative model have galvanized attention around AIs potential to replace human labor and have given birth to a host of competitors.

However, subsequent media reports detailing the tendency of models to sometimes also exhibit bizarre and hallucinatory behavior have also raised concerns about the black box nature of some AI models and sparked calls for better transparency and accountability.

The statement drew praise from many quarters. If large language models continue to advance, they will surpass human ability tenfold, wrote Nimrod Partush, vice president of AI and data science at cybersecurity analytics firm Cyesec Ltd., in emailed comments. There is potential for a real existential risk for mankind. I am leaning toward seeing AI as a benevolent force for humanity, but I would still recommend extreme precautions.

Philosophically I believe the private sector should take care of AI governance but thats not going to happen, saidKen Cox, president of web hosting service Hostirian LLC. Unfortunately, I believe the government should have some regulations on AI, but they need to be minimal and we need great leaders stepping up and educating through the process.

However, not everyone is convinced of AIs doomsday potential and some questioned the groups motives in publicizing the statement so aggressively.

If thetop executives of the top AI companies believe AI creates a risk of human extinction, why dont they stop working on it instead of publishing press releases? wrote software developerDare Obasanjo on Bluesky Social.

Their macho chest-thumping is pure marketing, wrotemedia pundit Jeff Jarvis.

To the extent these risks are real, and many of them are, its up to them, the developers and companies that own this technology and will use it, to come together and create industry standards,tweetedYaron Brook, chairman of the board at the Ayn Rand Institute. Stop running to government to solve your issues.

Business executives have been transfixed by the topic. A recent survey of senior executives by Gartner, Inc. found that AI is the technology they believe will most significantly impact their industries over the next three years.

THANK YOU

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Coalition of AI leaders sees 'societal-scale risks' from the ... - SiliconANGLE News

Highly anticipated returns, family drama, and literary invention feature in this falls notable fiction.

Top 10

The Bee Sting

Paul Murray. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Aug. 15 ($30, ISBN 978-0-374-60030-3)

Irish novelist Murray, who recently toured Metas virtual reality platform for New York magazine, conveys the bleakness of a territory closer to homehis countrys Midland Regionin this family drama.

Come and Get It

Kiley Reid. Putnam, Jan. 9 ($28, ISBN 978-0-593-32820-0)

Campus hijinks ensue with the story of a University of Arkansas resident assistant who takes on extra work in hopes of buying a house after graduation and deals with pranks from dorm residents.

Devil Makes Three

Ben Fountain. Flatiron, Sept. 26 ($30.99, ISBN 978-1-250-77651-8)

Fountains second novel comes 11 years after the NBCC-winning Billy Lynns Long Halftime Walk. The setting is Haiti, where an American expat adjusts to the new normal after the 1991 coup.

Family Meal

Bryan Washington. Riverhead, Oct. 10 ($28, ISBN 978-0-593-42109-3)

Washington continues writing about food, which he did so well in Memorial, with a story of a bakery in Houston and two friends whose bond helps one of them get through the death of his lover.

Happiness Falls

Angie Kim. Hogarth, Sept. 5 ($28, ISBN 978-0-593-44820-5)

A young Korean American woman frantically tries to determine what happened to her father after her younger brother returns from a park near their Virginia home without him, covered in blood and unable to speak.

The Maniac

Benjamin Labatut. Penguin Press, Oct. 3 ($28, ISBN 978-0-593-65447-7)

Chilean writer Labatut, author of the International Bookershortlisted When We Cease to Understand the World, unspools a story involving Hungarian polymath John von Neumann and the roots of AI.

My Work

Olga Ravn, trans. by Jennifer Russell. New Directions, Sept. 4 ($18.95, ISBN 978-0-8112-3471-9)

Danish writer Ravn returns after the speculative workplace novel The Employees with a hefty mixed-genre meditation on birth, motherhood, and writing.

Tom Lake

Ann Patchett. Harper, Aug. 1 ($30, ISBN 978-0-06-332752-8)

Set in Northern Michigan in the spring of 2020, Patchetts latest centers on a woman and her three adult daughters as they pepper her with questions about her past during a visit home.

The Unsettled

Ayana Mathis. Knopf, Oct. 24 ($29, ISBN 978-0-525-51993-5)

In another long-awaited return, Mathis follows up 2012s The Twelve Tribes of Hattie with the story of a familys resilience after moving from Alabama to Philadelphia in the 1980s.

The Wren, the Wren

Anne Enright. Norton, Sept. 19 ($27, ISBN 978-1-324-00568-1)

A young writer, the descendant of a famous Irish poet, has a much different relationship with her maternal grandfathers poems than her mother does, setting the stage for a story about great art by a perhaps not-so-great man.

Literary Fiction longlist

Algonquin

The New Naturals by Gabriel Bump (Nov. 14, $27, ISBN 978-1-61620-880-6). Bumps sophomore novel is a tragicomedy of an underground Black utopia in western Massachusetts, where a young woman from Boston settles, hoping for a sense of community and a better life.

Astra House

Do You Remember Being Born? by Sean Michaels (Sept. 5, $27, ISBN 978-1-66260-232-0). An acclaimed 70-something poet of modest means takes up an unexpected new career with a tech company, where she collaborates with an AI program to write poetry.

Avid Reader

One Woman Show by Christine Coulson (Oct. 17, $25, ISBN 978-1-66802-778-3) follows up Coulsons collection, Metropolitan Stories, with another book inspired by her work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this time a novel with a character portrait in the form of gallery wall text.

Ballantine

The Bookbinder by Pip Williams (Aug. 1, $28, ISBN 978-0-593-60044-3). After The Dictionary of Lost Words, Williams chronicles two sisters working as bookbinders in 1914 Oxford whose horizons are expanded as WWI draws the men away from home.

Berkley

All You Have to Do Is Call by Kerri Maher (Sept. 19, $28, ISBN 978-0-593-10221-3) draws on the true story of the Jane Collective, which helped women gain access to abortions before the Roe v. Wade decision.

Bloomsbury

The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng (Oct. 17, $28.99, ISBN 978-1-63973-193-0). Malaysian writer Tan is back 11 years after the Booker Prizeshortlisted The Garden of Evening Mists with the tale of a married couple visited in 1921 Penang by author Somerset Maugham, who picks up on his friends unhappiness.

Catapult

The Book of Ayn by Lexi Freiman (Nov. 14, $27, ISBN 978-1-64622-192-9). In this satire, Ayn Rand becomes a source of inspiration for a disillusioned debut writer after her novel is dismissed by critics.

Coffee House

Nefando by Mnica Ojeda, trans. by Sarah Booker (Oct. 24, $17.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-56689-689-4) combines a morality tale with a deep dive into the gamer world, as a group of Barcelona artists gets sucked into a horror game called Nefando that blurs their sense of reality.

Counterpoint

The Premonition by Banana Yoshimoto, trans. by Asa Yoneda (Oct. 3, $24, ISBN 978-1-64009-371-3). Japanese writer Yoshimotos 1988 novel, translated for the first time, involves a young woman struck by an unsettling feeling about her childhood.

Crooked Media Reads

Mobility by Lydia Kiesling (Aug. 1, $28, ISBN 978-1-63893-056-3). The daughter of an American diplomat has written a novel about privilege and the Caspian Sea oil boom, centered on a teenage girl growing up with her foreign service family in 1998 Azerbaijan.

Doubleday

Normal Rules Dont Apply: Stories by Kate Atkinson (Sept. 12, $28, ISBN 978-0-385-54950-9) is a thematically linked collection featuring protagonists as diverse as a queen, a secretary, and a gambler.

Ecco

Brooklyn Crime Novel by Jonathan Lethem (Oct. 3, $30, ISBN 978-0-06-293882-4) returns to the terrain of Lethems most celebrated work and covers five decades of a Brooklyn neighborhoods economic upheaval and racial tensions.

Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo (Aug. 1, $30, ISBN 978-0-06-320726-4). The YA authors adult debut follows a clairvoyant woman and her Dominican American family in Santo Domingo and New York.

Europa

A Volga Tale by Guzel Yakhina, trans. by Polly Gannon (Sept. 19, $28, ISBN 978-1-60945-934-5). Russian writer Yakhina draws on the history of a 17th-century German settlement in Russia with a love story involving the composer Jakob Bach, who spins a series of fairy tales for his daughter.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Absolution by Alice McDermott (Nov. 7, $28, ISBN 978-0-374-61048-7). The National Book Award winner chronicles two women who meet in Vietnam during that war, where one of their husbands is a Navy lawyer and the other a corporate bigwig. In the present day, they reexamine their commitment to their husbands work.

Blackouts by Justin Torres (Oct. 10, $27, ISBN 978-0-374-29357-4). The author of We the Animals draws on an early-20th-century book called Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns in this tale of a young man caring for an older man at the end of his life.

Feminist Press

The Singularity by Balsam Karam, trans. by Saskia Vogel (Jan. 24, $16.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-55861-193-1). A woman takes care of a family of refugee children after their mother dies by suicide in Swedish writer Karams latest.

Graywolf

Im a Fan by Sheena Patel (Sept. 5, $17 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-64445-245-5) is told from the perspective of an unnamed young woman as she strikes up an unbalanced relationship with a powerful married man.

Grove

So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men by Claire Keegan (Nov. 14, $20, ISBN 978-0-8021-6085-0). The title story of this triptych on regret and secrets has already appeared in the New Yorker, which previously ran Keegans novella Foster.

Grove/Gay

Hot Springs Drive by Lindsay Hunter (Nov. 7, $27, ISBN 978-0-8021-6145-1) delves into themes of body issues and hunger in a tale of friendship and jealousy based on a real murder.

Harpervia

People Collide by Isle McElroy (Sept. 26, $28.99, ISBN 978-0-06-328375-6) follows up their hit debut, The Atmospherians, with a fantastical novel about a man who wakes up in his wifes body.

Hogarth

Great Expectations by Vinson Cunningham (Jan. 23, $27, ISBN 978-0-593-44823-6). Theater critic Cunningham makes his fiction debut with a bildungsroman about a Black man working on an Obama-like senators presidential campaign.

Kensington

When the Jessamine Grows by Donna Everhart (Jan. 23, $16.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-4967-4070-0). A North Carolina woman tries to keep her family out of the Civil War.

Knopf

Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri, trans. by the author and Todd Portnowitz (Oct. 10, $27, ISBN 978-0-593-53632-2). Originally written in Italian, Pulitzer winner Lahiris stories convey a series of perspectives on Italys capital from locals and tourists alike.

Wellness by Nathan Hill (Sept. 26, $30, ISBN 978-0-593-53611-7) centers on a married couple dealing with the 21st centurys rapid cultural changes 20 years after meeting in college in the 1990s.

Little, Brown

The Apology by Jimin Han (Aug. 1, $28, ISBN 978-0-316-36708-0) is a South Korean ghost story set over several decades of the countrys history. It features a late matriarch tasked in the afterlife with reversing her familys curse.

Liveright

The Pole by J.M. Coetzee (Sept. 19, $26, ISBN 978-1-324-09386-2). A journeyman Polish pianist attempts to seduce a wealthy Spanish patron of the arts in the Nobel Prize winners latest, which poses questions about the pairs shifting power dynamic.

Mariner

America Fantastica by Tim OBrien (Oct. 24, $32, ISBN 978-0-06-331850-2). The National Book Award winner returns to fictionafter the memoir Dads Maybe Bookwith a picaresque of a down-and-out journalist who commits a bank robbery and becomes a fugitive.

Morrow

The Leftover Woman by Jean Kwok (Oct. 10, $30, ISBN 978-0-06-303146-3). A mother travels from China to New York City to search for her daughter, who was taken away from her as a result of Chinas one-child policy.

New York Review Books

Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt (Sept. 19, $17.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-68137-781-0). British writer Boyt makes her U.S. debut with a novel about a woman who takes care of her granddaughter while her daughter deals with a drug addiction.

One World

The Golem of Brooklyn by Adam Mansbach (Sept. 26, $18 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-593-72982-3). The author of Go the F**k to Sleep returns to adult fiction with a tale of antifascists who reanimate a golem to help fight white supremacists after a rally in Charlottesville, Va., reminiscent of Unite the Right.

Overlook

The Men Cant Be Saved by Ben Purkert (Aug. 1, $26, ISBN 978-1-4197-6713-5) traces the rise, fall, and reinvention of a young copywriter for an ad agency, who, after he gets fired, burrows into the kabbalah and abuses prescription pills.

Pantheon

A House for Alice by Diana Evans (Sept. 12, $28, ISBN 978-0-593-70108-9) draws on the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London for an account of a British Nigerian family affected by the disaster.

Penguin Press

The Fraud by Zadie Smith (Sept. 5, $29, ISBN 978-0-525-55896-5) gathers a disparate set of characters in 1873 London for the trial of an Australian man accused of fraud.

The Wolves of Eternity by Karl Ove Knausgrd (Sept. 19, $35, ISBN 978-0-593-49083-9) takes another step away from My Struggle with a dual-timeline narrative involving a Norwegian man in the mid-1980s who wonders about his fathers identity and a woman working as a biologist in present-day Russia.

Random House

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Fall 2023 Adult Announcements: Literary Fiction - Publishers Weekly

Movie sequels are always an exciting venture, both for filmmakers and audiences. Studios often greenlight these follow-ups based solely on the financial potential, even if the previous installment failed to truly connect with viewers. After all, the first rule of Hollywood is to make money, so box office receipts often matter more than critic reviews or audience scores.

Some films underperform upon release but become cult classics years later after growing on the audience. These movies inspire studios to take another stab at the material. Other times, a mediocre entry from a franchise, even after stumbling at the box office, attempts to rise from the ashes and land a resurrection from producers who simply cannot bear the idea of letting go.

Related: 11 Movies That Were Expected to Be Huge Box Office Hits, but Bombed Instead

Either way, as you scroll through this list of box office bombs that were granted second chances, try to consider what exactly was it that drove studio executives to renew a failing formula. Perhaps it was blind optimism, a refusal to accept defeat. Or it was the magic of better marketing, a hope that next time, with more explosive trailers and fancy stunts, a dud could be reborn as a hit. Perhaps its simply the nostalgia of rebooting a once-beloved brand or characters that filmmakers want to play with. Whatever the motivation, these sequels showcase Hollywoods credo that in show business, no bomb is too big to ignore. These cinematic reincarnations of box office bombs remind us that a sequel, like any other story, lives or dies on the intangible heart, spirit, and the magic of meaning.

Starring Keanu Reeves as Kai, a devoted disciple, this action-adventure flick from 2013 tells the story of a band of samurai who seek revenge against the treacherous overlord who hurt their master, Lord Kira, and falsely banished them. Regardless of bringing feudal Japan to life with some jaw-dropping sets and true-to-picture costume design, the movie was a commercial flop.

As a half-Japanese-half-British outcast, Reeves' character was all about loyalty and honor as the band of warriors faced off against the enemy and ultimately pulled off an extensive plan to take down Lord Asano. Without a doubt, 47 Ronin had talent involved, but the movie still failed to capture hearts and box office success. A sequel, Blade of the 47 Ronin, was recently released on Netflix, resulting in another underrated movie with stylized cinematography and action scenes.

Donnie Darko is a cult classic if there ever was one, and yet fans are confused as to how they feel about to date. Richard Kelly's mind-bending debut follows the surreal journey of a troubled teenage boy named Donnie Darko, who sees visions of an ominous 6-foot rabbit named Frank. Frank warns Donnie that the world will end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds, and meanwhile, he oversees everybodys path to doom.

The movie meshes elements of sci-fi, horror, and dark comedy to create a psychological thriller that bombed upon release but found new life on DVD and VHS. Donnie Darko attracted a devoted fanbase for its brilliantly weird tone and themes of existentialism. Eventually spawning a directors cut and a much-maligned sequel, S. Darko, the original remains an underground treasure.

Way before CGI and extreme special effects dominated popcorn cinema, Disney made an attempt to bless the big screen with an imaginative feat of practical effects and storytelling. The aim was to whisk away the audience into a computer mainframe for an adventure of light cycles and matchbox-sized programs bringing the machine world to life. But unfortunately, the visual spectacle of Tron could not compete with an audience that was accustomed to Star Wars groundbreaking effects.

Despite a compelling storytelling involving a hero and an ally defeating a malevolent software, the movie received mixed reviews. It gradually (and deservedly) gained a following of tech enthusiasts and animation buffs who recognized how awesome it was for its time, keeping the film alive until the visually stunning sequel Tron: Legacy arrived nearly 30 years later, showing how even a box office dud can launch a successful franchise.

Not a rare example of a movie trying to outshine its predecessor, The Chronicles of Riddick is a sci-fi thriller that picked up the story of Vin Diesels antihero Riddick a decade later after the modest cult hit Pitch Black. Boasting a $105 million budget, elaborate production design, and expansive world-building, Chronicles also brought stars like Karl Urban, Thandiwe Newton, and Keith David into the mix.

While the movie aimed to increase the scope of the franchise, it stumbled to match mainstream audiences tastes. But because Vin Diesel and director David Twohy collectively thought to keep the crook-turned-reluctant-messiahs saga alive, they returned with another charming, sci-fi-bent film titled Riddick in 2013. This time, keeping the spending low, the franchise earned a place among the most unlikely and strangely satisfying sequel stories ever told.

Another modest entry starring Vin Diesel that put XXX on the map; it wasnt until the film franchise returned with Ice Cube taking up the role of a new agent Darius Stone sent to Washington D.C. to protect the President of the United States that fans finally gave up. Thanks to its turgid plot, tedious action sequences, and overall fading feeling of the narrative, XXX: State Of The Union's attempt at succeeding at the box office was a huge no-no.

That isnt to say director Lee Tamahori didnt try. There were elements of spy cynicism and political commentary, but there were subpar at best and ended up alienating all but the most diehard XXX fans. So, even though the State of the Union crashed and burned at the box office, Paramount refused to scrap this property. The result was XXX: Return of Xander Cage, a disastrous threequel that came years later.

As surprising as it seems today, the Coen Brothers' stoner comedy classic about "The Dude" and his White Russian-fueled bowls bowling adventures arrived dead at the box office, making a little over double its $15M budget. Yet through late night-night showings and word-of-mouth, Lebowski grew into a cultural phenomenon rivaling only a few other such feats. Besides, The Big Lebowski stars Jeff Bridges as the lead, who is considered one of the greatest actors of the generation.

The movie gave us countless catchphrases, costumes, and rituals that seemed to work in transforming the films lovable losers into self-styled heroes. Nearly two decades passed before rumors about a long-awaited sequel began swirling, and in 2019, the studio gave us The Jesus Rolls, which followed John Turturro's Jesus. Regardless of tapping a timeless vein of counter-culture cool, it seems like the movie is just another commercially failed comedy.

Related: The Big Lebowski: A Look Back at One of the Coen Brothers' Most Underrated Films

Starring Christopher Lambert as Connor Macleod, an ancient Scottish immortal warring through the centuries, Highlander bursts in through the doors as a very promising sword-swinging action adventure with a dash of fantasy. For the time, the narrative and the visuals were clearly fresh. While the B-movie tried taking itself to higher highest by using a legendary Queen soundtrack, neat visuals, and attractive leads, it still could not make up for the weak writing and uneven tone, and deadpan delivery.

The audiences were left cold, and they simply demoted Highlander to a bargain movie. However, in 1991, the studio decided to go big for some reason and dropped Highlander II: The Quickening, which again was a failure. Even after keeping the franchise with increasingly ridiculous sequels, comics, and TV shows, there never seemed to be an influx of Highlanders, showing that sometimes passion isnt enough to make an idea live through the years.

Irish twin brothers on a righteous crusade against Bostons underworld evildoers whats not to love? Boondock Saints introduced an unusual mix of dark comedy and vigilante justice featuring Norman Reedus and co-starring Sean Patrick Flannery and Willem Dafoe before any of them were too famous. But Troy Duffy's directorial debut flopped upon release. Whether it was the scattered plot or the rough technical aspects, the movie just could not break through on the commercial front, and it has since served mainly as a cautionary tale for indie filmmakers.

Yet, over a decade later, a poorly received sequel snuck out in the form of Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day. The movie upped its marketing game and managed to endure. The brothers, now retired, returned to Boston after being accused of murder, proving that maybe Boondock Saints' powders were still wet.

Wet Hot American Summer was a pitch-black satire of 80s camp movies that naturally became a belly flop of epic proportions. Propelling the careers of stars like Amy Poehler, Bradley Cooper, and Paul Rudd, the movie followed a group of counselors at a summer camp, filled with so much pent-up energy, impatiently waiting for the talent show to go well so they can all go home. It commits entirely to its silliness and humor, but watching it becomes a test of endurance.

But if the movie is popular at all, it is purely through the power of home video services because beneath the calamities was a genuinely sweet story that founds its audience a bit too late. In 2015, the messy magic returned with Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, which proved to be more hilarious than the original. Honestly, it kinda grows on you.

Another example of a high-profile box office bomb that granted an unlikely sequel over two decades later, the Ivan Reitman sequel to the inaugural movie in the franchise that came out in 1989, was a weirder entry in the classic franchise. Fans thought Ghostbusters II otherwise essentially trod the same waters as the first, with the retired party returning for some fun-filled supernatural mission involving an ectoplasmic slime threat.

The movie was also followed up by another entry in 2016, chronicling the adventures of Abby, Erin, Jillian, and Patty as they try to stop an apocalypse in New York City. The comedy and spectacle had nothing to do with the franchise except a few references here and there, and the backlash only demonstrated how the reboot could have only ever succeeded had it followed the same trajectory as its original. Only recently, the comedic cast returned to grace viewers with nostalgia and a healthy mix of heart and humor with Ghostbusters: Afterlife as an unlikely sequel.

Often hailed as one of the greatest films ever made, it may come as a surprise to many that MGMs classic musical fantasy was initially dismissed as a box office bomb upon its release. Even though the cost of production was extremely high, The Wizard of Oz received indifferent reviews from critics. Plus, there was competition from 1940's Gone with the Wind, and the technical difficulties of making Ozs fantasy world come to life seemed to conspire against the movie at first.

It wasnt until after multiple TV earrings over decades that Oz came to capture the hearts of generation after generation. From its charming fable teaching morals to its iconic characters like the Cowardly Lion and the Wicked Witch, every aspect worked together to make it a timeless work of magic that has entertained audiences for over 80 years. The sequel, Return to Oz, took a darker tone but did nothing to diminish the formers appeal.

Related: The Wizard of Oz: The Real Story of the Famous Production

A midnight movie that graced the big screen decades before the term even existed, The Rocky Horror Picture Show was a campy musical parody of 1950s B-movies. The story revolves around a transvestite alien named Frank N Furter, who provides refuge to Brad and Janet on a stormy night. The movie seems very compelling to horror fans right now, but it failed spectacularly upon release, closing within a week of its premiere.

After goth became popular and counterculture rose in the following decade, Rocky Horror grew into an underground phenomenon. The audience would participate in rituals formed around the film's strange characters and sing along to Richard O'Briens campy songs. In 1981, Shock Treatment came out and followed Brad and Janet returning to their hometown and playing along with the folks in their reality television drama. Although odd, the sequel never diminished the inaugural movies glow.

Based on Rhode Islands beloved Hasbro toy franchise, this big-budget adaptation hoped to launch a billion-dollar movie universe just like Transformers. But alas, it disappointed both critics and fans with a bloated mess of nonsensical storytelling and one-dimensional characters. Despite having a star-studded cast led by Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Sienna Miller, the film sputtered at the box office. It spelled only doom for G.I. Joe on the silver screen.

Yet, Hasbro held fast to their most prized military action figure property and remained undaunted by the failure of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. It was determined to bring him back with bigger ambitions, and 2013's G.I. Joe: Retaliation was a strangely self-aware sequel that somehow managed to improve upon the first film. Where big brands and childhood icons joined hands, the name alone was enough to spark an interest.

Despite featuring a high-caliber cast including Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy, this Halloween comedy about witch sisters wreaking havoc in Salem failed to cast a spell on audiences when it was released. Hocus Pocus may have become one of the greatest holiday fantasies now, gradually enchanting a new generation of kids who embrace it as a campy, feel-good staple.

Still, in 1993, the movie was a surprising bomb. Whether it was the infectious energy, Sarah Sanderson's iconic cackle, or the amusing nature of Midler's outrageous Winifred, the film continued to inspire everything from Halloween costumes to parodies. The box office dud was resurrected in 2022 with a sequel titled Hocus Pocus 2, which premiered on Disney+.

Probably the most famous box office bomb turned beloved classic, Its A Wonderful Life was Frank Capra's heartwarming Christmas tale that has served as an inspiration for audiences and filmmakers alike for almost eight decades. The movie follows a man named George Bailey, who is shown the value of his life by a guardian angel. Its philosophical nature and poignant themes of life failed to resonate with the public back then, but its repeated screenings on television earned the film a whole new life.

The audiences were captivated by its emotions, small-town charm, and profound message of cherishing life's simple joys and making every moment count. Whats more surprising is that Wonderful Life's overnight success decades later brought in a sequel. Unbeknownst to many, Clarence was told from the guardian angels perspective, and it follows almost the same storyline.

While the violently subversive sci-fi action of the original Robocop filled theaters with blood-soaked glee, RoboCop 2 threw its cyborg hero into a dystopian crime war in Detroit where hes supposed to save the day. The movies plot may seem wildly appealing, but the truth is that it bored the audience and flopped at the box office. Even for the most devoted fans, Robocop 2's racier R rating, larger body count, and over-the-top villains did nothing but represent a true adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novels.

Action junkies do consider it a favorite and embrace its unfiltered excess, but the mainstream audiences always turn up their noses. The sequel that came out in 1993, RoboCop 3, also crashed, proving the sagas second life less commercially successful even after cranking up everything that would have made the original successful.

Related: RoboCop 2: Why Its One of the Best Sci-Fi Sequels of All Time

Nobody attempted to bring back this 1998 monster for over two decades. But the latest iteration in Warner Bros monster universe tried to pit Godzilla against Mothra, Rodan, and King Ghidorah. The movie, written and directed by Michael Dougherty, promised epic visual spectacle and a starry cast. And it delivered both, but the critics and audiences were both unfazed.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters had an unnecessarily long runtime and a convoluted plot that failed to match the simple fun of previous Godzilla outings. So much that it threatened to derail the franchises revival before it truly began. But for some moviegoers, the film's monster mayhem and jaw-dropping creature designs breathed new life into the classic kaiju, ensuring another cinematic showdown looming on the horizon. Godzilla vs. Kong was first delayed, but it did provide some action in the form of giants stomping cities and breathing fire.

Adapted from Mike Mignola's beloved graphic novel titled Dark Horse Comics, Guillermo del Toro's vision of a gruff, cigar-smoking demon who fights monsters for a secret government agency may have won over critics, but it surely failed to set the box office ablaze. There have long been fans of the character his mix of horror, humor, and engrossing pulp action.

And so, when Hellboyblended del Toro's inventive visual style and Ron Perlman's swaggering lead performance, the franchise made sure to stay back as an underrated fantasy. Way before the movie was even announced, del Toro was already preparing a sequel. The release was moved from 2006 to 2008, but Hellboy II: The Golden Army was again poorly received by the new generation. After all, the DIY spirit that sometimes powers the world of comic books does not suffice for a great franchise.

Narrowing it down to an honest opinion, some literary material simply resists the alchemy of moviemaking. And even though Ayn Rand's libertarian dystopian novel seems an unlikely candidate for a box office bomb-turned-sequel, writer-director Paul Johansson's passion project managed to bring the text-heavy volume to the screen. The movie seemed lazy in its obscurity and was harshly criticized for butchering Rand's complex themes.

Atlas Shrugged: Part I greatly disappointed fans of the novel, but its political allegory sparked enough controversy for a sequel to emerge the following year. Needless to say, Atlas Shrugged: Part II fared no better critically or commercially. This type of misguided persistence only reminds us that some box office bombs are less cinematic failures and more victims of their own dogma.

Ridley Scott's neo-noir sci-fi cult classic came out the same year as Tron. And it underperformed at the box office despite groundbreaking production design, sleek visuals, and a picture-perfect portrayal of a dystopian future. Rick Deckards mission to obliterate the army of androids and save the day was anchored by poor marketing and received with mixed criticism. Plus, there was also competition from blockbusters like E.T.

Naturally, Blade Runner was doomed commercially at first. But over time, its visionary world-building, thoughtful examination of what it means to be human and iconic performances by Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer cemented its status as a science fiction masterpiece that influenced a genre and was imitated countless times. Thirty-five years later, a sequel, Blade Runner 2049, arrived to renewed interest and proved that some box office bombs are destined to become timeless hits.

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20 Box Office Bombs That Got Sequels - MovieWeb