D.T. Max, author of Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story, the recently released biography on David Foster Wallace, discusses writing his much-anticipated look at the late author’s life. Further whet your appetite for DFW’s biography with our exclusive look at the book’s opening paragraphs.
An Interview with D.T. Max
For Your Delectation
Today's edition of Book Reviews Worth Reading: Kathryn Schulz's first official outing as the book critic for New York Magazine (on the late Anthony Shadid's House of Stone) and Anti-Matter author Ben Jeffery's take on Houellebecq's The Map and the Territory. (While you're at it, you might as well read Elaine Blair nailing Houellebecq at the NYRB (in the second-best possible way)...or our own Bill Morris' défense.
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JJS to LARB
"Do you know the philosopher Slavoj Žižek?" asks John Jeremiah Sullivan in his interview for the LA Review of Books. "He has this thing about love, the evil of love, and he says, I really don’t like love, because what love says is: I pick you out from everything, and I’m going to give you special attention, meaning that everything else is denigrated, and he says there’s something a little evil in that, and in the same way I think that there something a little philistine about lists."
Orbital Vacations
Looking for a place to burn those vacation days? How about outer space, or one of the other 44 places tapped by The New York Times?
Tuesday New Release Day: Hadley; Hunt; Aboulela; Bohjalian; Tarkington; Lambert; Morris; Hawdon
Out this week: The Past by Tessa Hadley; Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt; The Kindness of Enemies by Leila Aboulela; The Guest Room by Chris Bohjalian; Only Love Can Break Your Heart by Ed Tarkington; The Children's Home by Charles Lambert; Travelers Rest by Keith Lee Morris; and Jakob's Colors by Lindsay Hawdon. For more on these and other new titles, check out our just-published Book Preview.
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How to Research
David Nicholls wonders: When researching a novel, is Google maps enough?
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A Symmetrical but Opposite Study of Darkness and Light
“I was also deeply protective of my father, who at the time of my reading was struggling with illness and other demons. Yet I saw painfully how he could also be a figure of fun. It dawned on me that Cal, supposedly a great friend, might be mocking him—even just by writing about his mockery by others. I registered the first stirrings of an uncertain dislike." Diantha Parker considers her father's long friendship with Robert Lowell, immortalized in Lowell's poem "To Frank Parker."
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