June 4, 2013 On the Shelf Murder! Intrigue! Book Clubs! And Other News By Sadie Stein “Illustrator Jonathan Wolstenholme is a fine artist living in London who depicts still lifes [that] feature animated books with arms engaged in humorous scenarios.” Tee-hee. Pulitzer-winning novelist Adam Johnson interviews Kim Jong-il’s sushi chef. The prime suspect in Pablo Neruda’s possible murder is an American double agent in witness protection (!!!). Today, Melville House releases James Agee’s “Cotton Tenants: Three Families” in book form. How to spot the homicidal maniac in your book club.
June 3, 2013 Arts & Culture Philip Roth Reads “In Memory of a Friend, Teacher and Mentor” By Sadie Stein In April, Philip Roth published a eulogy for his beloved high-school teacher Bob Lowenstein in the New York Times. A couple of weeks ago, Roth visited Audible.com’s Newark, New Jersey, headquarters to record an audio version of the eulogy, which is now available as a free audio download at Audible. Listen to an exclusive clip below. For every download of “In Memory of a Friend, Teacher and Mentor,” Audible will donate $1 to the Newark Public Library. “We are delighted to be able to offer Philip Roth’s legions of fans this special audio recording of Philip reading his moving eulogy for his high school teacher,” said Audible founder and CEO Donald Katz. “Here at Audible, we celebrate our connection to the great city of Newark every day, and as a literary company we take special pride in the fact that Newark is Philip’s hometown. Hearing a legendary author reading his own words can be an incredibly intimate and moving experience, and we hope many people will download this wonderful audio piece and in doing so help us support the Newark Public Library, which sustained Philip as a young reader and writer.” Mr. Roth was kind enough to talk a bit about the audio recording, the important role of the library during his childhood and young adulthood, and the inspiration teachers can provide. I understand that all of the conference rooms at Audible are named for people or places significant to Newark and its history, and that it has a Philip Roth room. Did you record there? No, that’s a conference room. It’s right next to the Stephen Crane conference room. I recorded in a little studio named for Duke Ellington. Are you someone who can listen to his own voice? I haven’t done much of it. As a rule, you don’t do audio recordings? No, I don’t. Have you listened to other recordings of your work? No. As a matter of principle, or lack of interest? I listened once. That took care of it. Read More
June 3, 2013 Fiction 3 Stories of God: 5, 6, and 7 By Joy Williams Louis-Léopold Boilly, Tartini’s Dream. This week, we will be running a series of pieces from Joy Williams’s 99 Stories of God. First published in The Paris Review in 1968, Joy Williams has since appeared in our pages many times. 99 Stories of God is her first book of fiction in nearly a decade and was written, she has said, partly in an attempt to imitate the inimitable Thomas Bernhard, that “cranky genius of Austrian literature,” and his The Voice Imitator: 104 Stories. 5 At some point, Kafka became a vegetarian. Afterwards, visiting an aquarium in Berlin, he spoke to the fish through the glass. “Now at last I can look at you in peace, I don’t eat you anymore.” Read More
June 3, 2013 Bulletin A Girl with a Mind By Sadie Stein The Women’s Prize for Fiction (formerly known as the Orange Prize) has a new partner: Baileys, the Original Irish Cream Liquor. Quoth Kate Mosse, Chair of the Women’s Prize for Fiction board, “We were impressed not only by the scale of their ambition, but also their passion for celebrating outstanding fiction by women and willingness to help in bringing the prize to ever wider audiences.” This we do know: they have long celebrated the fiction that beautiful women constantly drink large glasses of Baileys on the rocks. But we’re happy to see the prize getting sponsorship—at least through 2017.
June 3, 2013 On the Shelf Suicide Notes, Mick Jagger, and Other News By Sadie Stein “The suicide note—and I’m being deadly earnest—is moving, strange, harrowing and peculiar literature … People’s interest in them is almost pornographic.” Hence, a class on the art of the missive. “After you have spent five or six years on a novel, you can’t abandon the project without risking a nervous breakdown.” After twelve years since publishing a story, Akhil Sharma talks to Page Turner. Mick Jagger says his autobiography would be boring, and besides, everyone knows everything. Take this spelling bee test, and tremble. (The winning word, by the way, was predictably controversial.) Can there be too many pictures of nifty book rooms? There cannot. Above, the Library Lounge in Zurich.
May 31, 2013 Arts & Culture A Visit with Patrick Leigh Fermor, Part 3 By Ben Downing Read part 1 here and part 2 here. There was an incident dating from this vagabond period—from 1956, to be exact—that I was keen to ask Paddy about. Some weeks earlier I had come across, in a sort of anthology of classic put-downs, an anecdote about a contretemps between Paddy and Somerset Maugham. When I asked Paddy about it, he ferreted out a photcopy of a letter he had written at the time to a friend of everyone concerned, Deborah Devonshire, in which he describes what happened. It begins by telling how, after a week in the Alps with director Michael Powell’s team shooting Ill Met by Moonlight (Moss’s account of the Kreipe abduction), Paddy—who is, incidentally, played by Dirk Bogarde in the movie—had settled down to write in a friendly curé’s garden. The letter proceeds as follows: Before I’d set out, Annie [Fleming, wife of novelist Ian] told me that “Willy” had asked her to stay and to bring anyone she liked (so why not me) and when she got to the Villa Mauresque she rang up, announced the O.K., and collected me in a borrowed car. Lunch went swimmingly: Annie, Mr Maugham, his friend Alan Searle, and me. So well that, when we got up, Maugham—looking rather like a friendly Gladstone bag—said that he hoped I would stay and go on with my writing, and showed me a charming room. So all prospects glowed when we assembled on the terrace before dinner. The only other guests were a Mr and Mrs Frere; he was Mr Maugham’s publisher at Heinemann and she was Edgar Wallace’s daughter. Making conversation over marvellously strong drinks, I asked her if her husband was anything to do with someone I knew with the same name. She said she wasn’t sure: what did he do? I said, “He’s a herald.” “What sort of a herald?” “Oh, you know, works in the College of Arms—he’s Rougedragon Pursuivant, or something like that.” “How interesting.” “Well, he’s an exception to Diana Cooper’s generalization.” “Oh, what is that?” “She says it’s generally believed that all heralds stutter.” Read More