BBC‘s Tom Geoghegan asks whether or not The Great Gatsby is “the perfect tale for modern America.”
Jay Gatsby, Iconic American
Tuesday New Release Day: Bennett; Dermansky; Jarrar; Witt; Weiner; Oliver; Atwood
Out this week: The Mothers by Brit Bennett; The Red Car by Marcy Dermansky; Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar; Future Sex by Emily Witt; Hungry Heart by Jennifer Weiner; Upstream by Mary Oliver; and Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-Half 2016 Book Preview.
Your Kahlo and My Kahlo
If you live in London, and you like the idea of a play in which “two women [try] to put on a one-woman play about Frida Kahlo in whom neither of them is really interested,” you should stop by the Bridge House Theatre, which is playing Chris Larner’s The Frida Kahlo of Penge West until November 23rd. At the LRB blog, Rosemary Hill provides a brief review.
New Chabon Story
Recommended reading: A new short story from Michael Chabon is now available from Tablet.
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Old Favorites
Looking for more thoughts on My Life in Middlemarch to supplement today's interview? At Salon, Laura Miller reviews Rebecca Mead’s book, which she calls a "moving demonstration" of Middlemarch's power. (You could also read Adelle Waldman's Year in Reading piece about the novel.)
The Best of the Best of the Best
Lots and lots of great stories populate Longform's "Best of 2011" list.
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“Daytripper is overrun with rich detail”
Dominic Umile takes a look at the Daytripper, a comic by Brazilian brothers Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá. The comic, which was selected recently for les Fauves d'Angoulême – the largest comics festival in Europe – concerns the "volley of riches and failure from the desk of an obituary writer." As Umile notes, the art of obituary writing experienced quite a popularity surge in 2012. Times public editor Margaret Sullivan wrote about the regularity with which obituaries appeared on A1 in the paper, and the column even warranted the creation of its own dedicated Twitter account.
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