DeAndre McCullough died last week at the age of 35. McCullough was famously portrayed as the young protagonist in David Simon and Edward Burns’s book The Corner, which went on to become its own HBO miniseries. The Wire later adopted aspects from both the book and the miniseries. The obituary Simon wrote is not to be missed.
DeAndre McCullough Dies
Tribute
“Once [Jenny] Diski did get going as a writer, she and [Doris] Lessing agreed to a kind of literary nonaggression pact: Lessing would not write about Diski if Diski would not write about Lessing. Even now, I sensed a note of anxiety in Diski’s attitude toward her current project. When I asked her if she had any titles in mind for the finished work, she said: ‘Gratitude.’ Or: ‘Ingratitude.’ I can’t decide which.’”
Eating with Proust
“In fact, the lack of action in the food memoir can be compensated with narrative and theme.” Angshuman Das writes on the food memoir at Ploughshares. Pair with a piece from our own Hannah Gersen on Proust’s Habit and the gluten-free diet.
Writerly Advice
We’ve covered the Atlantic series By Heart a number of times before. In the latest edition, Angela Flournoy makes a case for writing about what you don’t know. Pair with Toni Jordan’s Millions essay on “the ideas behind fiction.”
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Their Thanksgiving(s)
"Behind the collective feast and public ritual lies a personal dimension: the holiday as each of us has lived it, laughed about it, imagined it or reinvented it." For their "My Thanksgiving" feature, The New York Times asked nine writers — including Parul Sehgal, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Emma Cline — how they celebrate the holiday. Pair with Nguyen's 2015 Year in Reading.
Detective Michael Lewis on Goldman Sachs v. Sergey Aleynikov
The Big Short and Liar’s Poker author Michael Lewis investigates the case of Sergey Aleynikov, a computer programmer accused by Goldman Sachs of “violating both the Economic Espionage Act of 1996 and the National Stolen Property Act.” Is this the case of an international spy bent on stealing company secrets, or is this the case of an overzealous company taking revenge on an ex-employee, and using an ill-prepared government agency to do so?
Brooklyn Boys II
...meanwhile, quondam neighbor Jonathan Lethem has packed up for California (to take over the Pomona College position last held by David Foster Wallace). Just in time for Halloween, he raps with New York Magazine about the move...and about his new, book-length treatment of John Carpenter's They Live.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Chabon, Díaz, Straight, Boianjiu, Powers, Byrne, Woodward
Another big week for books is headlined by Michael Chabon's Telegraph Avenue (the book's opening lines) and Junot Díaz's This Is How You Lose Her. Also out are Susan Straight's Between Heaven and Here, touted debuts The People of Forever Are Not Afraid by Shani Boianjiu and The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers, How Music Works by Talking Heads frontman David Byrne, and Bob Woodward's latest Beltway tick-tock The Price of Politics.
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