Archive for December, 2009


Peale on Koons

“Most of his requests seemed impossible at the outset, and satisfying them was like a competitive sport.” Novelist Samantha Peale, on Jeff Koons.

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McEwan fiction

Hadn’t read Ian McEwan since abandoning Saturday, but enjoyed “The Use of Poetry” on the train home tonight.

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Quartet: Rhys’ doomed love affair on screen

The novelist Alexander Chee and I corresponded at Granta this summer about Jean Rhys’ doomed love affair with Ford Madox Ford and the novels each of them wrote after it imploded. Rhys’ novel was called Quartet. I have no idea whether the 1981 Merchant Ivory film based on it is any good, but it’s been posted online in ten parts. . . .

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