“Unable to replicate the success of his first novel [The Loom of Youth],” writes Philip Quarles, “[Alec Waugh] did create a lasting impact by being credited with inventing the cocktail party when he shocked guests by serving, instead of afternoon tea, rum swizzles.”
Evelyn Waugh’s Brother Invented the Cocktail Party
Extremely Patient and Incredibly Careful
It looks like Jonathan Safran Foer will be publishing his first novel in eleven years next fall. The book, tentatively titled Here I Am, is the story of an American Jewish family, set against a background of traumatic events in the Middle East including earthquakes and an invasion of Israel. Foer’s last novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, enjoyed tremendous critical and commercial success. Here’s a piece on JSF’s crazy, confusing, die-cut book Tree of Codes.
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“Sleep is strange”
Recommended Reading: In an essay for Poetry, Siobhan Phillips explores an “old connection” – the tie between sleep and poetry – using Lyn Hejinian’s Book of a Thousand Eyes as a compass.
Live Long
When your father shows you The Wrath of Khan at a young age, you develop an appreciation for the late Leonard Nimoy, whose death scene as Spock in that film is among his most famous performances. For Jen Girdish, that appreciation led to this essay, which reflects on Nimoy, her father’s own death and the onetime ubiquity of VHS tapes.
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Branded
“It is all bricolage for personal identity building,” says Rob Horning of N+1, providing a somewhat bleak image of the “fast fashion” industry and social media, and what can be expected from the future.
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Always and Never
Nicola Griffith gives us guidelines for writing about disabled people.
Freedom Looms
Franzen fans: Freedom, the long-awaited follow-up to The Corrections is now available for pre-order. The specs: 576 pages, August 31st 2010. “Freedom comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. In charting the mistakes and joys of Freedom’s intensely realized characters as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time.”
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Ashbery Goes Digital
“Of all the literary genres, poetry has proved the most resistant to digital technology, not for stodgy cultural reasons but for tricky mechanical ones.” Looks like that might be changing, however, as Open Road releases Flow Chart, Your Name Here and 15 other John Ashbery digital poetry collections.
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Taste Lessons for Adults
How do you eat your broccoli? British food historian Bee Wilson’s newest book, First Bite: How We Learn to Eat takes a hard look at how eating is a learned, cultural behavior–and how it’s never too late to change bad eating habits.
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