At one of our first dinners — or was it during a marathon phone conversation? — I discovered that Marie Mockett shares my admiration for Colson Whitehead’s work. I figured readers of this site would enjoy someone else’s perspective on his writing for a change, so I invited her to interview the author (who’s become a friend) about his new . . .
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.)