Twenty years ago, J.J. Jameson, one of Chicago’s “most beloved antiwar poets,” escaped from jail in Massachusetts, where he was serving time for a string of robberies and two brutal murders, according to police. His real name is Norman A. Porter Jr. Since the jailbreak, he’s been on the run, establishing a new identity but not keeping a particularly low . . .
Emma Garman’s “Extremely Similar and Incredibly Suspicious,” which appears at Mediabistro today, examines the resemblances between the new books from Jonathan Safran Foer and his wife, Nicole Krauss: Take a tragically dead father, a good-hearted but distracted mother, and a clever kid engaged in a mystery-solving quest around New York. Add weighty historical background, aging WWII survivors, some plot-driving letters/diary . . .
At the dentist (yes, again) yesterday, I picked up the latest issue of New York magazine and was delighted to find Keith Gessen’s excellent and highly critical review of Ian McEwan’s latest novel, Saturday, which I’m currently reading. The New York Sun interviews new Paris Review editor and New Yorker writer Philip Gourevitch, who says, “I’m not planning to make . . .
The proprietress of Tingle Alley takes note of the rise in book titles suggesting that the author was “dragged kicking and screaming into print.” Among them are Kirstie Alley’s How To Lose Your Ass and Regain Your Life: Reluctant Confessions of a Big-Butted Star and Richard M. Cohen’s Blindsided: Lifting a Life Above Illness. “Wouldn’t it be fabulous,” Caaf says: . . .
Nick Kocz, a regular email correspondent, sends in this report from Jonathan Safran Foer’s “reading at a packed Barnes & Noble in Charlottesville Saturday as part of the Virginia Festival of the Book.” Before the Foer reading, Kocz attended an event held by former Poetry magazine editor Joseph Parisi, and he weaves in some reflections on that event, too. . . .