An hour ago I would have said my week couldn’t get any worse. I would have been sorely mistaken. Terrible news: The great Grace Paley, feminist, activist, and until today one of our best living short story writers, has died. She was 84. Leora Skolkin-Smith (whose fiction Paley created an imprint to publish) sent word in email. “The last thing . . .
Many, many thanks to everyone who came out in the rain last Friday night to hear Rupert Thomson read from and discuss his latest novel, Death of a Murderer, at McNally Robinson. He was charming and smart, and we had a nice crowd, at least 15% of whom — or should that be which? — were bloggers. Beforehand I met . . .
While I focus on things other than blogging this month, I’m running a series on independent bookstores. Below writer James Tata praises Powell’s Books of Portland, Oregon. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that I live in Portland because Powell’s Books is here. When I first visited Portland as a tourist in the early 90s, the Pearl . . .
In this, the final installment of the Love Triangle Letters, my beloved Texan grandmother drafts a note to the other woman’s husband. It’s exceedingly polite, which she wasn’t always. “Regardless of what Christine has done I blame her no more than the man. I am a great believer in the ‘Single Standard,’” she begins. She urges him to take Christine . . .
Kerouac’s own “appealing commercial cover” sketch for On the Road identified him as John, not Jack. (Not only did he write and draw, he sang.)