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. . . .
I intend to try Alex Balk’s method of cooking a fucking steak, although I’m pretty sure the first principle of the native Texan’s catechism is “use a grill.” I don’t think you’re even allowed to call it steak in my mother’s house if it wasn’t cooked over an open flame (or maybe chicken-fried). For another tempting pan-cooked variety, see Norman . . .
“For me it had become a concrete wall.” Stephen Emms discovers that he’s fallen out of love with Murakami. (See also.)
“When it’s a cold November in the soul, Melville’s Ishmael may go off to sea, but some of us simply reach for Hardy’s collected poems.” Indeed.