Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman are teaming with Darren Aronofsky on an HBO pilot, Hobgoblin.
Chabon and Waldman Go HBO
Uprooted
What is deracination, and why is it key to understanding American fiction? In her novel Housekeeping, Pulitzer laureate Marilynne Robinson defines it as “the free appreciation of whatever comes under one’s eye,” inspired by the Western sentiment of “feeling no tie of particularity to any single past or history.” In the Boston Review, Jess Row states that deracination is “a long-lived and nearly universal trope in white American literature,” claiming it represents “an American ideal: not to strip from the roots, but to de-race oneself.”
Bud Powell Says “Goodbye”
Recommended Reading: Jessica Contrera’s mesmerizing account of a shuttered Waffle House in Bloomington, Indiana. I promise you. This is worth your time.
●
●
Unferth on Lerner
The always fantastic Deb Olin Unferth reviews Ben Lerner‘s Leaving the Atocha Station.
●
●
A Century of Cheever
Allan Gurganus commemorates the 100th anniversary of his teacher and friend John Cheever’s birth. “Cheever, now unfairly known as the gloomy, sodden satyr of suburbia,” Gurganus writes, “was at least rarely gloomy. Fact is he was more fun per minute than is legal in a nation this Republican.”
Amitava Kumar, Collector of Writerly Advice Distilled Into One Line
For years, Amitava Kumar has asked writers to sign copies of their books and add a line of valuable advice, "as a glimpse into that particular writer’s mind."
●
●
●
Kafka in Myanmar
“On my manhood rests a tattooed / portrait of Mr. President. / My beloved found that out after we wed. / She was utterly gutted, / Inconsolable.” Poet Maung Saungkha may have to prove in a Myanmar courtroom that he doesn’t have a tattoo of the nation’s president on his genitals.
●
●