My brief appreciation of Frederick Barthelme’s Waveland is up at NPR. The novel, his twelfth work of fiction, obliquely parallels the fate of the [Mississippi Gulf Coast] town of its title. “Even before Katrina,” he writes, “when Waveland was all there, it wasn’t a high-toned beach town; it was more like 10 miles of down-on-its-luck trailer park. After the storm, . . .
Derek Graham’s Rock My Religion, a remarkable early ’80s documentary of sorts, contends that evangelical revivals and American rock music — which we usually think of as having come together starting only in the last couple of decades — were linked from the start. Graham formulates a history that begins with the Shakers, an early religious community who practiced self-denial . . .
Dubravka Ugresic reimagines the witch of Russian lore who kidnaps small children and lives in a house on chicken feet. (Via.)
File under authors I know, writing well: excerpts from Marc Fitten’s Valeria’s Last Stand & Whitehead’s Sag Harbor.
“There comes a point when you can count the number of books you’re going to write before you die” — Ishiguro at The Guardian. (Via.)