LA Review Of Books #41

In the 41st edition of LARB Quarterly, our writers, artists, and poets examine the concept of truth from every possible angle. They search for it, sure, but also illuminate how fraught the insistence upon an objective truth can be—and how destructive the pursuit of it can become. Emily Wells and Aaron Bornstein’s investigation into child geniuses reveals the way genius itself becomes a commodity. While Claire Shaffer’s essay on Taylor Swift’s rerecording process shows just how tempting it can be to tweak the historical record, Wendi Bootes’s on the legacies of fabrication and factography in the Soviet Union show just how wide-reaching its implications can be. And Sam Sax’s series of invented Jewish folktales force us to ask if there’s a truth beyond the literal.