 The Humorina carnival in Odessa on April 1, 2013. (File photo by Alexey Kravtsov/AFP via Getty Images) | On this April Fool's Day, a Russian dictator is waging war on a Ukrainian comedian. The incongruity of that European tragedy is hard to fathom. Even as President Zelensky resists President Putin's assault on the battlefield, Americans are watching his comedy, "Servant of the People," on Netflix (story). Several factors have thwarted Russia's plan for quick victory, but one of them is surely the witty spirit of the Ukrainian people. Amid the images of Putin's atrocities, we've all seen evidence of the Ukrainians' adamantine humor. Millions have watched YouTube videos of Ukrainian farmers taking joyrides on abandoned Russian military equipment. Valeria Shashenok attracted more than 1 million followers to her TikTok page where she laughed in the face of the deprivations of war. (Shashenok is now a refugee in Italy; yesterday she reported that her brother had been killed in Ukraine.) King Lear appreciates his Fool, but in real life, dictators are notoriously allergic to comedy. Soviet comrades were routinely sent to the Gulag for telling political jokes. Even 65 years after the old mass murderer's demise, the Kremlin banned Armando Iannucci's "The Death of Stalin" (review). In 2013, the leader of one of Serbia's pro-democracy groups wrote in Foreign Policy, "Laughter and fun are no longer marginal to a movement's strategy; they now serve as a central part of the activist arsenal, imbuing the opposition with an aura of cool, helping to break the culture of fear instilled by the regime, and provoking the regime into reactions that undercut its legitimacy." For instance, in 2017, Russia made it illegal to portray Putin as a gay clown (story). It takes a special kind of political fragility to think that's a wise legislative move. | As Social Security edges closer to crisis, Fixing Social Security offers a comprehensive analysis of the political fault lines and a fresh look at what can be done—before it is too late. | | | | | Rob Sears is the British author of a funny parody called "Vladimir Putin: Life Coach." (Chapter 1: "How to Win Friends and Influence Elections.") Although Orwell claimed, "Every joke is a tiny revolution," Sears warns against overstating the tactical efficacy of wit. "It's hard to prove that political humor accomplishes much of anything," he tells me, "but a world without any would surely be a worse place. It would be that bit harder to puncture (even if temporarily) a tyrant's self-mythologizing, and that bit lonelier to be one of their opponents." Jill Twark, a professor of German at East Carolina University who studies humor and tyranny, agrees on the limited but essential value of satire. "It boosts the morale of people who are suffering from oppression," she says, but "it does not change the course of history." Comedy, though, has a special place in Ukrainians' hearts. Ilya Kaminsky, the award-winning poet of "Deaf Republic" — one of the 10 best collections of 2019 — was born in Odessa. He has fond memories of Humorina, the city's immensely popular holiday of humor on April 1. Kaminsky, who now lives in the U.S., explains that Humorina is adjacent to our April Fool's Day, but different. In Odessa "it is a day of kind humor," he tells me. "When I was growing up, the slogan for it used to be 'Humor and kindness will save the world.'" Kaminsky was born just a few years before Leonid Brezhnev died, and he can remember his parents reciting funny stories to each other in the old Soviet Union. "There was a kind of resistance in that," he says. "It was a step outside of the normative — a language two humans spoke to each other, a joke being the bit of free space, a gulp of air, a laugh."  Lord Byron in Albanian dress, by Thomas Phillips, 1813. (The British Ambassador's residence in Venizelos Mansion, Athens). | After two years of covid lockdown, you're ready to play "Trapped in a Cabin With Lord Byron." It's the latest role-playing game from Oliver Darkshire, our favorite antiquarian bookseller. In February, Darkshire, who works at Sotheran's in London, released Bookstore, a game that lets players experience the soul-crushing anxiety of being a harried bookseller with rent due in 10 days (story). His new game is inspired by that famous 1816 vacation when Byron and his friends were cooped up in a Swiss villa writing ghost stories. Their parties were better than our parties: Mary Shelley started "Frankenstein"; Byron and his personal physician, John Polidori, worked on vampire tales. In Darkshire's game, players roll dice to choose from 18 Byronic Events that determine their Stress, Scandal and Masterpiece Creation scores: - "His half-sister is here, and they are far too intimate." (+2 Scandal)
- "He's brought his pet bear. It is not trained." (+2 Stress)
- "He's found a new skull to use as a goblet." (+3 Scandal)
If your Stress score reaches 10, for example, you lose your patience with Byron "and either kill him in a fit of rage or otherwise descend into uncontrollable weeping from which you never emerge." Darkshire notes that the year before that famous holiday gathering, a volcano eruption in Indonesia had thrown up so much ash that the climate across Europe was affected. "The world was actually gloomier," he says. "It must have been awful, trapped in a house with Lord Byron, and you look outside, the skies are gray, no sun." As comically bizarre as the elements of this new game are, Darkshire has drawn them directly from the real-life details of Byron's biography. "He did have a pet bear, which he would walk about university to intimidate people. And he had a habit of drinking out of people's skulls. In fact, he wanted Shelley's skull after he died, but Mary Shelley refused to give it to him. She was like, 'You can't be drinking out of my husband's skull; that's distasteful, Byron.' He didn't understand." "He really was this creature out of myth," Darkshire says. "Three days on holiday with him was like a lifetime." Darkshire posted his Byron game on Twitter, where it's been liked more than 17,000 times. He's now assumed the role of moderating the comments. "The good news is everyone loves to trash Byron," he says. "They've all agreed on that even if they can't agree on everything else." How long before Darkshire abandons bookselling for game designing? "Oh, God," he mutters, "I think both are equally unlucrative worlds. I'd be exchanging one destitution for another." "Slow Horses," a six-part series based on Mick Herron's best-selling Slough House spy novels, debuts on Apple TV+ today. My wife and I have watched the first three episodes, and we think it's terrific — a winning combination of wit and wiles (trailer). Gary Oldman stars as the disheveled manager of a pack of MI5 agents who've screwed up so badly that they've been relegated to a decrepit walk-up where they toil away at espionage make-work. Chief among those failed agents is River Cartwright (endearingly played by Jack Lowden), whose epic failure opens the series. Earlier this year, our audiobook reviewer, Katherine A. Powers, also recommended the recorded version of the Slough House series (review). If, like me, you're new to these books, start with "Slow Horses." The 10-year anniversary edition includes a bonus short story and a charming introduction by Herron. "The life of spies, whether the James Bond copycats with their jetpacks and exploding wristwatches, or the down-at-heel dogsbodies of Len Deighton and John le Carré, were foreign territory to me," Herron admits, "but I knew what went on behind ordinary doors; I knew about office life, about office politics. I knew, thanks to a recent takeover of the company I worked for, that the larger an organization becomes, the more dysfunctional it gets. This was a truth that surely applied as much to the intelligence services as to any other place of work." With that inspiration: Slough House was born. But as soon as Herron released the first novel, his original U.K. publisher dropped him. . . . "The book was a slow-burn success, to put it mildly," he writes. "It was seven years before it found itself on a bestseller list — but a handy lesson from this is, if you're only going to be successful in one half of your career, make it the second." A spokesperson for Soho Press, which publishes Herron in the U.S., confirms that Americans were slow to pick up on his novels. "There was something of a disconnect for U.S. readers in those early days. For a lot of people, 'Funny British Spy Fiction' = 'Austin Powers.'" But that's not Herron's tone at all. Funnily enough, Nancy Pearl happened to recommend "Slow Horses" on NPR in early 2017 during the shock of Donald Trump's election. Suddenly, a seven-year-old novel about white nationalism, Russian intervention and intelligence shenanigans sounded ripped from the headlines. Herron's books have been selling briskly in the U.S. ever since. "Bad Actors," the eighth book in the Slough House series, will be published May 10.  Scribner | Almost 30 years ago, I first saw "for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf" at the Black Rep in St. Louis, where the author Ntozake Shange was raised. I can still remember the emotional power and visual impact of Shange's choreopoem about the struggles and triumphs of Black women. Combining dance, poetry, memoir and social criticism, the play was already rightfully considered a classic in the mid 1990s; it's since ascended into the realm of theatrical legend. Tonight, a revival production of "for colored girls" opens on Broadway, directed and choreographed by Camille A. Brown. To celebrate, Scribner has reissued a tie-in edition that includes a note from Brown, suggested discussion questions and historical photos from previous productions. It also includes Shange's illuminating 2010 essay about how the play evolved from her solo spoken-word performance. She deals candidly with the "hateful response from African-American English-speaking males," a backlash she compares to "the white reaction to black power." In 2018, after years of wrestling with mental and physical challenges, Shange published a collection of poems called "Wild Beauty." Our reviewer wrote, "No poet since Langston Hughes has insisted so forcefully on black people's right to simply be" (review). Shange died later that year at the age of 70 (appreciation). An added bonus of the new Scribner edition is a brief, heartfelt foreword by Jesmyn Ward. The two-time National Book Award winner recalls being a depressed teenager when she found "for colored girls" in a bookstore while on a school field trip. "It was a revelation," Ward writes. "It was as if my secret identity that I yearned to embrace, the aspirational writer, surfaced in the spaces between the type and told my teenage self this: Hello, I see you."  EL James at a book signing in Barnes & Noble, Bethesda, Md., in 2011. So many fans crammed into the two-story bookstore that the escalators had to be turned off. (Ron Charles/The Washington Post) | "As time ticks on, I assign it mythical, Arthurian legend, Lost City of Atlantis status. It never happened; it never existed. Perhaps I imagined it all." That's Anastasia Steele thinking about her first grinding kiss with Christian Grey, but it could be any of us thinking about the "Fifty Shades" phenomenon. As time ticks on, is it really possible that a self-published work of fan fiction inspired by the Twilight novels went on to sell more than 150 million copies, transform the publishing industry, make erotic literature mainstream and spawn a billion-dollar movie franchise? Perhaps we imagined it all. Nope. Today at 3 p.m., you can watch a live-streaming video of EL James signing copies of the 10-year anniversary edition of "Fifty Shades of Grey." That's likely to be hotter than watching Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan, who acted out the story with all the chemistry of a fence post and a mop. Unlike the paperback copies published by Vintage in 2012, this new edition of "Fifty Shades of Grey" from Bloom is a hardcover with paisley endpapers, black-stained edges and a silken bookmark that in a fix you could use to tie someone up. The 10-year anniversary edition has undergone what James calls "a bit of a spring clean." That includes the addition of an alumni magazine profile of the "lithe, tall, and impeccably polite" Christian Grey and some minor edits. A spokesperson explains that "upon re-reading, Erika asked herself, 'Why was Anna always borrowing clothes? Why didn't she have a wardrobe of her own?'" In the foreword to "this new gussied-up edition," James remembers when she first became "totally addicted" to her fantasy about "unconditional love." (No, I'm not making this up.) "I would write everywhere — on the train, on the bus, but mostly at my desk in the corner of our back room, hiding my screen so my beloved teenage boys couldn't catch the odd bawdy word." James is not a particularly elegant writer, but no reviewer of her series has ever come up with a better description than "the odd bawdy word." The Bloom edition — strictly limited to just 20,000 copies — also includes a teaser excerpt from "Fifty Shades Darker," which will get its own special 10-year anniversary edition in August, followed by "Fifty Shades Freed" in October. Laters, baby.  Author Margaret Atwood (Photo by Luis Mora); Amazon Original Stories | Margaret Atwood released a new short story today called "My Evil Mother." It's a bittersweet tale about a young woman in the 1950s who's embarrassed by her eccentric mom. "My mother was an anomaly," the narrator explains, "no visible husband, no job exactly, though she did seem to have a means of support." In fact, her mother claims she's a 400-year-old witch. The narrator doesn't believe her — not entirely, anyhow — but she has to admit that her mother's cooking is unusual. "She was ahead of her time with the garlic." Her mother reads palms (as does Atwood). And her tarot readings — even when they're deeply irritating — have an unnerving tendency to predict the future. There's a perfect balance of silliness and poignancy in "My Evil Mother," which is really a story about the fantasies we never give up about our mothers. Atwood, who counts a 17th-century accused witch among her ancestors, has long shed light on the way women manage to exercise power with the tools at their disposal. What loving mother wouldn't cast a spell of protection around her children if she could? Atwood is the latest big-name author to release work on Amazon Original Stories, which launched in 2017. The platform's roster of authors includes Roxane Gay, Mindy Kaling, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Amor Towles and many others. The stories and essays are free to Prime members and Kindle Unlimited subscribers; $1.99 for non-members. That includes audio versions, too. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)  Oprah Winfrey has been named the 2022 Literary Champion by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation in Washington. (File photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP) | This week's literary awards, honors and a gobsmacking milestone: - Oprah Winfrey has been named this year's Literary Champion by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation for her "lifetime of devoted literary advocacy and a commitment to inspiring new generations of readers and writers." Winfrey will accept the honor on May 2 at the virtual PEN/Faulkner award ceremony hosted by yours truly (sponsorship and ticket information).
- Retiring Graywolf Press publisher Fiona McCrae has won the Kay Sexton Award. This annual prize, sponsored by St. Catherine University, honors an individual or organization for supporting books, reading and literary activity in Minnesota — but over the last three decades McCrae's influence on literary culture has been felt around the world.
- Kelvin Watson, director of the Las Vegas-Clark County (Nev.) Library District, won the Best Emerging Technology Application Award for a partnership called "Bringing the Library to Transit Riders." The program allows passengers on public buses "to instantly sign up for access to library materials" using their phones and the buses' free WiFi. The Reference and User Services Association praised the program for enabling more than 40,000 checkouts last fall.
- Remember Brandon Sanderson, the fantasy writer who wanted to raise $1 million on Kickstarter to fund his next collection of novels (story)? His month-long campaign ended last night with pledges totaling more than $41 million.
 Princeton University Press | I guarantee there is someone in your life who will love Jeff Deutsch's "In Praise of Good Bookstores." (That person may very well be you.) This elegant little book offers the most moving and erudite justification for the survival of bookstores I have ever read. Deutsch knows what he's talking about. He's the director of Seminary Co-op Bookstores, a nonprofit in Chicago, and he's also a superb essayist. Considering the convenience of online ordering, Deutsch wonders aloud why we even need bookstores anymore. His answer to that question draws on sources ancient and modern, including his own Jewish heritage. Like a good clerk who knows where every author is shelved, he can always lay his hands on the perfect quote from Borges, Whitman, Woolf and a hundred other writers. His book is both a celebration of the value of browsing and a demonstration of it. "Join me as we make our way through the bookstore," Deutsch writes. "We will wander the stacks, pull a volume from the shelves, consider a thought or two, delight in a particularly felicitous observation, daydream a bit, and hope to circumscribe the problem, that we might tighten the circumference around the solution." "In Praise of Good Bookstores" is not another romantic glorification of cozy bookshops (thank God) nor just another attack on the corrosive effects of Amazon. Deutsch has written a well-informed, intellectually rigorous critique of the business model and the values that have rendered most bookstores unsustainable in the modern era. But what will interest most of us is his wholly convincing justification for the necessity of preserving what he calls "an unalloyed bookish space."  W. W. Norton | Prodigious intelligence contends with righteous anger in Roger Reeves's second collection, "Best Barbarian." The first poem opens, "All lions must lean into something other than a roar," and then immediately turns to the life and work of James Baldwin. That tension runs throughout these profound pieces, which allude to Wittgenstein, Toni Morrison, Walt Whitman and other writers while considering the pain of grief, the legacy of racism, the ties of family. This brilliant collection requires and rewards careful rereading. I love the way this poem, which opens with a line from "The Confessions of St. Augustine," watches itself struggling to articulate something ineffable. Into the West ". . . It would seem clear that no one can call upon Thee
Without knowing Thee," though Augustine writes of God, here,
Notorious for his absence, he could also be speaking of desire,
Pleasure, the tick of snow against the dry leaves
Which sends my daughter spinning on her heel, the sound of it—
"that, Daddy, that"; sometimes the world, its loitering
Joy is just a that, an absence that calls, demonstrates its over-there-
Ness, its being but without a proper name so a silence
Sounded as when I enter the clearing I once begged for,
You, at an instant, absolute and looking back at me
As if witnessing a calendar or road you've already passed through
So my face now in whatever wolf, vulture, or golden horn
Of pleasure a that, a ticking of snow against the wet road,
Nameless, Thee, where you've been and left the-body-of-that-
Being so I, so I hurry and press into your leaving
Like a leaf scuttling after the dream of itself,
Into the sharp-wet of the snow against the skin, on into the West
Where desire—and sometimes pleasure—is a type of faith
What you call me to in this spilling, this motion of night:
Your hair loose in the water of your back.
Your spine has become the eye you wish for me to see
Through, but I must close my two good eyes, which is the beginning
Of any apocalypse or rapture: our daughter or the day,
Us touching the North and South of each other without compass
Or rose, this stumbling, a type of faith, too, a seeing
But without the dependence on sight or some heavenly ruin
As signal of an end. It was like the deer outside
Gathering at the window licking the cold glass to smoke. From "Best Barbarian: Poems," by Roger Reeves (W.W. Norton, 2022). Reprinted with permission of the author and publisher.  During my time at The Washington Post, I've had the honor of speaking with many leading figures, including Cookie Monster in 2018. (Screenshot/The Washington Post) | April 1 marks my 17th anniversary at The Washington Post (no fooling). Back in the early 2000s, it killed me to think about leaving The Christian Science Monitor, but the publisher kept suggesting that the paper would be closed if it didn't turn a profit, and, knowing that would never happen, I was determined to jump before I was pushed. But the early 21st century was not a great time to be looking for a job in literary journalism. Book sections were canaries in the newspaper coal mine. Most had already died. I contacted a paper in Texas on the very day it laid off its books editor. I never heard back from The Washington Post, but six months later, I re-sent the same query. Later, after I'd been hired here, I asked why my first application had been ignored. Turns out no one had any record of it. So here's my only bit of life wisdom: No means no, but silence probably doesn't mean anything at all. Persist. Meanwhile, send any questions or comments about our book coverage to ron.charles@washpost.com. You can read last week's issue here. If you have friends who might enjoy our free newsletter, please forward this email to them. They can sign up by clicking here. (They don't need to be subscribers to The Washington Post.)
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