I’m still obsessed with the life and writings of Bertrand Russell, and I keep meaning to post the passage from his autobiography that inspired one of my recent New York Times Magazine microcolumns, on Victorians’ belief that fruit was bad for children. Here it is: I remember an occasion at lunch when all the plates were changed and everybody except . . .
“I remember her art as a talisman against disintegration.” Caleb Crain on pronoun trouble and Elizabeth Bishop’s paintings.
“’I don’t know when I’m going to stop,’ he said. ‘I guess when I die.’” Harry Crews is working on a novel, all his old books may be released electronically, and Georgia Review has a new memoir excerpt.
Full Stop interviewed me about literature, politics, criticism, and the responsibilities of writers, as part of a series called “The Situation in American Writing.” Others who’ve answered the same questions: Marilynne Robinson, Alexander Chee, Victor LaValle, Porochista Khakpour, Geoff Dyer, Gary Shteyngart, T.C. Boyle, Roxane Gay, George Saunders, Aimee Bender, Siddhartha Deb, Christopher Bollen, Steve Himmer, Laura van den Berg, . . .
Muriel Spark, Jean Brodie, Maggie Smith, and Downton Abbey feature in my most recent New York Times Magazine micro-column. Smith is best known now for her role as the Dowager Countess, but she won the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Muriel Spark’s dramatic and overbearing schoolmistress in the 1969 adaptation of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. It’s . . .