NYC book truism
At The Strand’s 80th birthday gala, Fran Lebowitz correctly observed that New York breaks down into two groups: “people with five thousand books and people with the space for them.”
At The Strand’s 80th birthday gala, Fran Lebowitz correctly observed that New York breaks down into two groups: “people with five thousand books and people with the space for them.”
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 . . .
Will Allison‘s first novel, What You Have Left, depicts cycles of abandonment and longing set in motion across generations by a father’s disappearance. The writing is as precise as the story is emotionally true, and, when I finished the book and read Allison’s author bio, I wondered if he would attribute his concision to reading and editing manuscripts for STORY . . .
Dickens’ Bleak House explores both justice and “man’s sad efforts to approximate it in a regime driven not by justice but by law.”
Robert Bruce, my mom’s dad, sits at the far left of this shot next to Christine, the woman with whom he cheated on my grandmother throughout their short marriage. She became his third wife. I like to think the dinner photos became progressively less grim with each of his 13 marriages. The picture above was taken at Sivils Drive-In (below) . . .