Recommended Reading: Jessica Contrera’s mesmerizing account of a shuttered Waffle House in Bloomington, Indiana. I promise you. This is worth your time.
Bud Powell Says “Goodbye”
Kriegman Explains It All
This Splitsider interview with Clarissa Explains It All creator Mitchell Kriegman is fantastic. Among the many revelations that come out of the interview is this gem: “The most amazing person that you would never guess worked on the show was [The Hunger Games author] Suzanne Collins. She was the quietest, nicest person. Like having JK Rowling working on your show!”
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Open City Closes
Open City, a showcase for edgy writing for the past 20 years, is closing down due to the withdrawal of several sources of funding. “These things are not institutions,” founder and co-editor Thomas Beller tells the New York Observer.
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The man Lish fought for
It was the height of the feminist revolution and one man was trying, unsuccessfully, to publish a book about a man amidst a midlife crisis. 25 years later, Esquire editor Gordon Lish read sections of An Armful of Warm Girl in a literary magazine and demanded that Knopf reconsider publishing it (they did). This week over at Bloom, Nicki Leone dives into the work of W.M. Spackman, the man often referred to as “Fitzgerald‘s literary heir.”
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Witches of Walgreens
In the spirit of Alex Mar’s Witches of America and Stacy Schiff’s The Witches: Salem, 1692, here’s a piece from Atlas Obscura on pinpointing the exact site of the Salem witch trials. Spoiler alert: it overlooks a Walgreens parking lot.
O Detroit
You may have heard that our own Bill Morris has a new book on shelves. He talked about it with fellow Millions staff writer and California author Edan Lepucki. At the LARB, Diana Clarke reviews the book, which she calls “a sharp critique of the contemporary American post-racial narrative,” among other things.
Tuesday New Release Day: Egan; Eugenides; Thien; Okeowo; Solomon; St. Aubyn; Machado; Coates
Out this week: Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan; Fresh Complaint by Jeffrey Eugenides; Dogs at the Perimeter by Madeleine Thien; A Moonless, Starless Sky by Alexis Okeowo; An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon; Dunbar by Edward St. Aubyn; Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado (whom we interviewed recently); and We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
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Was just reading this article and musing about its relation to some of the comments on the Millions’ recent article on “John The Posthumous” by Jason Schwartz. The Millions comments raised some interesting questions about complex and simple style.
When I think about a complex, intricately detailed writing style, it bring to mind “My Name Is Red” by Orhan Pamuk. The style is such a perfect match for the setting – the 16th-century Ottoman Empire, and the lead character – a master miniaturist and illuminator of books. The novel is stuffed full of exotic tidbits -figurative art and Islam, tricky marital law issues, weird fantasies. I loved the novel and now pine to visit Istanbul.
In contrast, Ms. Contrera’s story is built up of deceptively simple observations, in a plain “Midwestern” style, that coalesce to creative a massive emotional impact. The style made me think of flat Indiana roads and sunshine.
I loved both pieces, and found the choice of style perfect for the story told. As my buddy Randy at the Y security desk says regularly, “It’s all good!”
Beautiful piece. Visits to that Waffle House were a cornerstone of my 4 years in Bloomington.