The Smart Set is a weekly feature, compiled and posted by Lauren Cerand, that usually appears Mondays at 12:30 pm, 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 Ms. Cerand at lauren [at] maudnewton.com by the Thursday prior to . . .
Charles William Bruce, otherwise known in la casa de Maud as the great-grandfather who killed a man with a hay hook, has always been one of the most compelling characters in my personal deck of Notorious Ancestor Playing Cards. And now he’s the second forbear — his wife Rindia being the first — to whom I owe an apology. June . . .
Last year I met the very talented Marlon James by accident at a PEN event. Afterward, he joined my friends Mark Sarvas and Amitava Kumar, and me, for a marvelous dinner at which I ate too little while drinking brown liquor. James and I talked about William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Jean Rhys, and I argued (passionately, but not, I . . .
Tayeb Salih, author of Season of Migration to the North, has died. Writer and critic Laila Lalami remembers him at her site.