May 21, 2012 On the Shelf Cuckolds and Commutes: Happy Monday! By Sadie Stein This writers’ workshop is inspired by the 7-train commute. Feel-good alert! A good samaritan bails out an endangered Vermont bookmobile. One affair, two sides of the story: when both cuckold and cad give their versions, and, by the way, the latter is John le Carré. The Marriage Plot, coming to a multiplex near you. (Okay, maybe not a multiplex.) Jay McInerney: “I was fortunate to get a lot of mileage out of my vices.”
May 18, 2012 On the Shelf Auden, Furious and Peripatetic By Sadie Stein “In Defense of Brooklyn”—November 1946. Local jerky and artisanal bitters do not, however, figure in the argument. When St. Marks in the Bowery changed its liturgy, Auden did not like it at all. His opener: “Have you gone stark raving mad?” Speaking of Auden, his many New York addresses. Yes, all would now be very expensive. President Obama claims to have never heard of 50 Shades of Grey. This inspires ambivalence. Chicago celebrates the centenary of native son Studs Terkel (who actually died at ninety-six). A camera that takes written pictures. Newbery-winning children’s author Jean Craighead George has died at ninety-two. An accomplished journalist and a nature lover, George was perhaps best known for her 1973 novel, Julie of the Wolves.
May 17, 2012 On the Shelf Crime, Punishment, and Chess By Sadie Stein The link between chess and writing. An excised page of The Little Prince goes on the block. Live out your fantasies in the penthouses that serve as the setting for Fifty Shades of Grey. Speaking of fantasies … hot authors. A Bay Area judge allows a prisoner to go free—provided he reads an hour a day and completes book reports. Meanwhile, a white-collar criminal is ordered to write a book. (The author considered, and rejected, the opening line, “Call me a Schlemiel.”)
May 16, 2012 On the Shelf Remembering Rosset and Sexy Hoaxes By Sadie Stein In the Evergreen Review he founded, a moving tribute to Barney Rosset. The best-read cities in America. Cooking Cather. Mike McGrady, perpetrator of sexy sixties literary hoaxes, has died. To quote the Los Angeles Times,“Inspired by popular best-sellers by the likes of Jacqueline Susann, McGrady challenged his newsroom buddies to write their own terrible, trashy, sex-filled best seller. McGrady and 24 other writers each took a chapter; in every badly written one, Penelope Ashe engaged in fantastical sexual exploits.” The rest is (sort of) history. Odd couples, indeed: famous literary roommates! Swamplandia! author Karen Russell wins the NYPL’s Young Lions Fiction Award.
May 15, 2012 On the Shelf Garcia Márquez Lives, Clockwork Orange Is Fifty By Sadie Stein Norwich, England, earns the title of a Unesco City of Literature. The curse of the New Yorker profile? Happy golden anniversary, Clockwork Orange. Perhaps happy isn’t the word? Copyediting Copyediting. Angela Garnett, daughter of Vanessa Bell, who chronicled her Bloomsbury childhood in a memoir, has died at ninety-three. Rumors of Gabriel García Márquez’s death were greatly exaggerated.
May 14, 2012 On the Shelf Slang and Secrets: Happy Monday! By Sadie Stein The ten most-read books in the world. Caleb Crain: “Like poetry and pornography, slang is easier to recognize than to define. Most of it is disapproved of by someone, but obscenity alone doesn’t qualify. It isn’t slang, for example, to refer to manure with a four-letter word. But if you put the article ‘the’ in front of that four-letter word and equate the president-elect of the United States to it, then slang it is, and very complimentary.” After seventy years, the identity of Lorca’s lover is revealed. In honor of late artist Mike Kelley, a replica of his home. Speaking of homes, Updike’s will become a museum. Walking with George Bernard Shaw.