I’ve said it before, but I can’t stress it enough: Rupert Thomson writes nightmares. He takes all the things humans dread and want the most, shuffles them together like so many cards, and deals them out on the page in some of the most straightforward but stylistically beautiful prose you’ll come across. What’s more, he knows how to keep a . . .
As if the Valerie Plame affair weren’t bad enough, in what may be retaliation for his forthcoming book critical of the Bush administration’s post-9/11 military “strategies,” a journalist has been falsely accused in a forged but seemingly official Defense Intelligence Agency cable of spying for Saddam Hussein. (Via Moby Lives.) Ricky Gervais of The Office claims to have read only . . .
Tod Goldberg offers advice to aspiring writers seeking admission to UCLA’s extension program: If your book is 750,000 words, I can’t help you. No one can. I’m sorry. Also, if your book is 750,000 words and you’re not a serial killer, there are some questions and comments I have for you: 1. I’m sorry your parents were awful to you, . . .
The Smart Set is a weekly feature, compiled by Lauren Cerand, that appears Mondays and highlights the best of the week to come. Special favor is given to New York’s independent booksellers and venues, and low-cost and free events. Please submit details to lauren@maudnewton.com. MONDAY, 3.21: Because sometimes, when choosing events, I have to ask myself, “What Would Henry Miller . . .
Reviewing Parini’s new biography of William Faulkner, J.M. Coetzee considers the addiction that fueled the southern novelist’s fiction: The acid test is what Faulkner’s biographers have to say about his alcoholism. Here one should not pussyfoot about terminology. The notation on the file at the psychiatric hospital in Memphis to which Faulkner was regularly taken in a stupor was: “An . . .