Your own personal New York City
“You are a New Yorker the first time you say, That used to be Munsey’s…” Finally getting around to Colson Whitehead’s The Colossus of New York.
Rahimi’s The Patience Stone
Emma Garman admires Afghan novelist & filmmaker Atiq Rahimi’s The Patience Stone, “a slender, devastating exploration of one woman’s tormented inner life.”
What we owe the dead is the truth
Joan Schenkar, who is equally engaging in person, explains in a New Yorker live chat how she came to write a biography of Patricia Highsmith.
Edward Said bio incoming
At last. Edward Said: The Charisma of Criticism, the biography by my friend and former professor H. Aram Veeser, appears next month. See also.
Earbrass, LTD: Writers in search of reassignment?*
“First, try to be something, anything, else.” That’s the famous first line of Lorrie Moore’s “How to Become a Writer,” and it’s funny because it’s true. Many writers do consider another path initially.
Roberto Bolaño, for instance, wanted to be a spy, Kate Christensen a rock star, Joan Didion an actress. Chris Adrian went [...]
Inspired by Achebe
“Would anyone possibly buy a novel by an African?” At Salon, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie offers an appreciation of Chinua Achebe.
Thomson’s This Party’s Got to Stop
“My mother spoke to me once after she was dead.” That’s the first sentence of Rupert Thomson’s forthcoming memoir, This Party’s Got to Stop, which I started reading last night and am loving and rationing. (I’m in lockdown at my sister’s place, getting some writing done; also, I’ve waited a long time for this book [...]
Condolences to Edwidge Danticat, whose family has not been spared
The house that Edwidge Danticat calls home while in Haiti collapsed on and killed her cousin Maxo, who was denied asylum in the U.S. several years ago. (See also.)
The elderly Norman Mailer
I’m curious about Dwayne Raymond’s memoir of his friendship with Norman Mailer. See also When Mailer almost profiled Obama.
Against Self-Reliance?
Should Emerson be ejected from the canon? Two professors say he writes like a crazy person and teaches students to do the same. Sonya Chung disagrees.
Bender fiction
Aimee Bender really knows how to create a mood. A new story, “Faces,” appears in the current (print) Paris Review.
Crispin on Gallant
Mavis Gallant’s heroines “are the awkward, the hopeless, the immature, the ones on the outside of womanhood looking in.”
Ways of drawing
“Drawing now involves subtracting as much as adding.” John Berger on “The Company of Drawings” in the latest Harper’s. (Subscription req’d.)
Jacket Copy reviews
David Ulin praises Owen Hill’s second Blackburn mystery, The Incredible Double, in a new review series at Jacket Copy.
Highsmith day
On Patricia Highsmith’s birthday, Joan Schenkar’s The Talented Miss Highsmith is nominated for an Edgar. (Via.)
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