Samantha Peale interviewed
Kurt Andersen talks with Samantha Peale, author of The American Painter Emma Dial, about creative passion & her work for celebrity artist Jeff Koons.
Kurt Andersen talks with Samantha Peale, author of The American Painter Emma Dial, about creative passion & her work for celebrity artist Jeff Koons.
In honor of the appearance of Love is a Four-Letter Word,* The Week invited me to contribute this week’s “best books” list. It’s devoted to “doomed love,” and a reader says it’s available now. Instead of focusing on autobiographical stories, I chose first-person works of fiction** that (mostly) take the form of confessions: Lolita, Les Liaisons dangereuses, The Black Prince, . . .
A reminder: Until I do a redesign that incorporates my Twitter feed, check there when it’s quiet here.
Shelf Discovery, inspired by my friend Lizzie Skurnick’s relentlessly entertaining Jezebel column, Fine Lines — “in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wizened look at the children’s and YA books we loved in our youth” — is just out. The book collects Lizzie’s insights on classics like The Long Secret, My Darling, My Hamburger, Jacob Have I Loved, . . .
Lapham’s Quarterly reprints a great 1924 Aldous Huxley essay on travel reading. The trick, he says, is to abandon the idea that you’re going to work your way through the Western canon on a two-week tour of France. A perfect book to take along on a trip is one “of such a kind that one can open it anywhere and . . .