On The Literary Trail -

Is the word thug about to be banned from polite society because some people claim it is being used as a coded substitute for the N-word?

It has an interesting etymology,
which Miranda Carter recently wrote about.

# PBS presented a documentary movie about JD Salinger by Shane Salerno this past week. It was nicely done, had good production values, and revealed material about the writer's life which hadn't been widely known previously.

But I thought it missed the mark in emphasizing World War II as a dominant issue for him and his writing. It seemed to me that as the product of a cultural intermarriage, Salinger had enduring identity issues.

And do we really need to know more about The Glass Family? I thought the family was nicely resolved by Wes Anderson's movie The Royal Tenenbaums.

# Adam Gopnik writes about Dave Van Ronk, Llewyn Davis, PL Travers, Walt Disney, and Mary Poppins.

# David L Ulin reviews Armistead Maupin's
latest opus: The Days of Anna Madrigal at LAT.

# Michael Berry reviews
JJ Abrams' new novel S. at sfgate.

# A trio of popular Crime
Novels briefly reviewed at The Mail.

# A letter from the Jaipur Literary Festival.

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