More Noted Things

David Neiwart,"Fox ambush crew pursues history prof with bogus claims – and is proud of it," Crooks and Liars, 5 April, has the footage of Fox News going all gotcha on Columbia's Alan Brinkley. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.

Paul Freedman,"A Spanish Epic Retold," WSJ, 4 April, reviews Burton Raffel's new translation of The Song of the Cid.

The new Common-Place is up! It's a special issue, offering many replies to Sydney Smith's question in the Edinburgh Review (January 1820):"In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?"

Denis Donoghue,"The unspeakable stress of pitch," New Criterion, April, reviews Paul Mariani's Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life.

I spoke with an editor at Life.com yesterday about its photographs at the Lorraine Motel after Martin Luther King's assassination. As a result, they've corrected the identification of the man shown embracing Ralph Abernathy and standing alone and pensive outside King's motel room. If you don't know who Will D. Campbell is, introduce yourself to his book, Brother to a Dragonfly.

Finally, farewell to Sidney Fine, who taught over 26,000 students in 53 years at the University of Michigan.