Writing for Popular Mechanics, our own Bill Morris “envisions the bright future of the great American city” he once called home: Detroit.
The Detroit Comeback
David Shields on the Colbert Report
Watch David Shields on the Colbert Report last week — Colbert: “Are you the Vanilla Ice of novels?” Shields: “Precisely.”
Two Good Things
USA Today is running an excerpt of Denis Johnson’s much buzzed about new doorstop Tree of Smoke.The New Yorker Food Issue, to my mind the highlight of the New Yorker publishing year, has arrived. Somehow I look forward to this one as much as I did the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue when I was twelve. Much of the good stuff isn’t online, but you can get a taste of the food writing on offer with a series of short essays under theme “Family Dinner.” Aleksandar Hemon, Gary Shteyngart, Nell Freudenberger, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, David Sedaris, Anthony Lane, and Donald Antrim are on the menu.
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Saving Civilization Through Stories With Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro discusses his latest novel, Klara and the Sun, and affirms the importance of literature and storytelling in society.
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Penguin Book Cover Postcards
An eye-catching treat for fans of books, particularly the vintage paperback variety: One Hundred Penguin Book Covers in One Box.
Fact-checking Steinbeck
As John Steinbeck’s classic Travels With Charley nears the half-century mark, a writer has retraced the author’s cross-country journey and come to the conclusion that the resulting book was full of inaccuracies and outright fabrications. The journalist Bill Steigerwald, whose article appears in the current issue of the libertarian quarterly Reason, says he didn’t set out to trash the Nobel laureate. “As a libertarian, I kind of liked the old guy,” Steigerwald tells the New York Times. “He liked guns; he liked property rights.”