Slate Book Club does On the Road
“Words I thought I’d never ever say,” a friend writes, “but really: Poor Jack Kerouac.”
“Words I thought I’d never ever say,” a friend writes, “but really: Poor Jack Kerouac.”
The Smart Set is a weekly feature, compiled by Lauren Cerand, that usually appears Mondays at 12:30pm 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 send details to lauren [at] maudnewton.com by the Thursday prior to publication, with the date in the . . .
Next month the Library of America publishes two collections of Edmund Wilson’s criticism. While reading the first, Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1920s and 30s, I was struck by “Poe at Home and Abroad,” in which Wilson ponders Americans’ failure to embrace Poe as a serious writer despite his critical acclaim in Europe. (His influence permeated “a whole half-century . . .
My mom was about 26, and her father, Robert, was in his 50s, when this photo of the two of them with their spouses, her first and his 12th(?), was taken at Las Vegas’ now-demolished Stardust in 1965. They were estranged for most of Mom’s childhood, partly at her stepfather’s insistence. But they got back in touch sometime before one . . .