The Smart Set is a weekly feature, compiled by Lauren Cerand, that usually appears Mondays at 12:30pm and highlights the best of the week to come. Special favor is given to New York’s independent booksellers and venues, and low-cost and free events. Please send details to lauren [at] maudnewton.com by the Thursday prior to publication, with the event’s date in . . .
As his hometown devotes 2007 to him, Kurt Vonnegut says his most recent book is his last. “I’m old, for God’s sake,” he told the A.P. “I’m terribly tired.”
For years there’ve been rumblings about a CIA – Paris Review link. Now co-founder Peter Matthiessen confirms that the magazine was his cover.
Harvard University Press has posted audio excerpts from lectures Borges delivered in 1967-68. (Via.) Evidently they are not new — except to me.
Colson Whitehead’s next novel “is about a teenager who subsists on TV dinners and toils at an ice-cream parlor.” (Via.)