Journalist and author Simon Winchester highlights five books “that shed light on the social history of his adopted homeland, from the late 19th century to the Great Depression.” We’re pleased to see Millions Hall-of-Famer Stoner make the cut.
Depression Books
Wednesday Links
As has been much noted elsewhere, the Wall Street Journal landed reclusive Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson to review a recent bio of Peanuts creator Charles Schulz. New York explains how the review was arranged. Meanwhile, the New Yorker has John Updike reviewing the book.BLDGBLOG articulates why I love LA so much (and why it is quite possibly the greatest city in the country). For some of my own thoughts on LA, harken back into the deepest archives.Since almost the minute I finished An Army at Dawn, the first installment of Rick Atkinson’s three-part look at the liberation of Europe during World War II, I have been pining for the second book. And now I have it. The Day of Battle covers the war in Sicily and Italy and I will be reading it presently. (It was An Army at Dawn that inspired our lists of World War II fiction and nonfiction.)My alma mater is showing Google Books some love.
Young and Old
After Herzog came out, Saul Bellow began the slow transformation from young Bellow into old Bellow, from the critically adored but little-known writer to the Nobel Prize winner whose views were solicited on every topic. In The New Yorker, Louis Menand writes about a new biography of the author, which tackles his early career. Related: our own Emily St. John Mandel on Bellow’s novel The Bellarosa Connection.
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Face Off: Kardashian/Kahlo
“Where does the line between the self-portrait and the selfie fall? Both Kardashian West and Kahlo are masters of the form—suggesting that perhaps there is no clear line at all.” Anyone who puts Frida and Kim together in an essay, as Sarah Murray has for The Rumpus, has our full and enthusiastic support. Also relevant: Alizah Salario‘s piece about the naming of North West.
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Gastronomy
It’s not hard to find studies of the connection between creativity and alcohol. It’s a connection which great minds have remarked upon for centuries. But what’s less remarked upon is a more everyday relationship — the connection between great writing and food. In The New York Review of Books, Patricia Storace reads Sandra M. Gilbert’s The Culinary Imagination. (Related: Stephanie Bernhard tries out Hemingway’s recipes.)
Stiff Manners
It takes a certain skill to link Taipei by Tao Lin, My Struggle Part I and Part II by Karl Ove Knausgaard and an old book on Italian painting in a single essay, but Zadie Smith is (naturally) the writer for the job. In a new piece for The NY Review of Books, she asks the reader to “imagine [a drawing of a corpse] represents an absolute certainty about you, namely, that you will one day be a corpse.”
Masters Review: Fall Fiction Contest
The Masters Review has announced Ann and Jeff VanderMeer as the judges for this year’s Fall Fiction Contest. The winning story will receive a $2,000 cash prize as well as publication in the magazine. Go submit, then read Josh Rolnick’s essay for The Millions on ten things he’s learned in over a decade of sending out stories.
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