For the summer issue of Bookforum, I wrote a joint review of Eileen Luhr’s Witnessing Suburbia, on the development of the Christian youth culture, and Bethany Moreton’s excellent To Serve God and Wal-Mart, on the making of Christian free enterprise. Here’s an excerpt: Books claiming to decipher evangelical Christianity for the secular reader are nothing new, but the Bush years . . .
Fellow Gemini Carrie Frye and I were born the same year, two weeks apart, and are watching the eye wrinkles develop on roughly the same schedule. Her birthday note to me this morning was divinely inspired. It reads: Last night I was watching American Idol (I know, I know) and KISS performed and that gave me a brilliant idea for . . .
Stephany Aulenback and Pasha Malla are two extremely talented writers I met years ago, when the literary Internet seemed smaller, after finding and enjoying their work online. Now Pasha’s The Withdrawal Method, a story collection highly acclaimed in Canada, is out in the States. Below Steph (who posts an occasional Babies in Literature series at her site) admires Pasha’s depictions . . .
Welty pal Hubert Creekmore’s 1948 novel The Welcome: A Novel of Modern Marriage centers on fallout from a secret affair between two men.
Justine Larbalestier, moved by a plea from a local librarian, raised $5000 for NYC libraries by promising to learn to lindy hop as research for her next book.