Sam Sacks admires Heinrich Böll’s “daringly and hypnotically written” novel about a renowned architect who sees his very success as a kind of complicity with the Nazis. If that’s not enticement enough, Jessa wrote the introduction to the reissue.
Celebrate Gypsy Rose Lee’s 100th birthday with readings, gossip, and burlesque, and Lee biographer/occasional stripteaser Karen Abbott at the NYPL this Saturday, January 8.
“Again and again progress is offset by brutality and the threat of much worse.” Suzanne Berne praises my friend Robb Forman Dew’s Being Polite to Hitler in the Times. Read it back-to-back with Dew favorite Christina Stead.
I got back from New Orleans just in time for Christmas — and for the blizzard, which has been really exciting, I say from my perch on the sixth floor. On Wednesday I’m off again, to South Florida, where Max and I will be staying at the Biltmore Hotel. Writing and our Downton Abbey binge will keep me occupied till . . .
True Grit divides Charles Portis’ admirers. Some, like Donna Tartt, believe it’s a classic on the order of Huck Finn; others, like Ron Rosenbaum, resent that it detracts attention from the rest. I like them all.