Week before last, the vivacious and quick-witted Aura Estrada died very suddenly after a swimming accident while on vacation with her husband, the novelist Francisco Goldman. I met her only once, the night of the Bolaño tribute, but her insights and stories and odd, lovely laugh have stayed with me since. Please read “Mi Aura,” a reminiscence Goldman wrote for . . .
In this photo, my other granddad, my dad’s father, stands just to the left of the shrimp mountain, sporting a bow tie and natty ’50s ‘do. The undated shot was taken at a Junior Chamber of Commerce Convention at Biloxi, Mississippi’s Buena Vista Hotel, which no longer exists. (Much larger version here.) Nowadays, at 89, Grandpa’s got a full head . . .
Cell phone novels are easy to ridicule. But they are good for at least one thing: learning kanji.
Who needs Shakespeare? Not his namesake theater in Lenox, Mass., where it’s a Tom Stoppard summer.
Incoming: another atheist tome, this time from His Dark Materials author Philip Pullman, whose “big, big book” may be a novel. (Via.)