At Page-Turner, Daphne Merkin reads Catherine Lacey’s Nobody Is Ever Missing, which follows the journey of a disenchanted New Yorker as she hitchhikes her way through New Zealand. The novel, Merkin writes, features what Leslie Jamison, in her recent essay collection, termed a “post-wounded woman.”
The Wildebeest
Michael Chabon, Punk
Before he was Michael Chabon the novelist he was Michael Chabon the punk musician. Now recordings of his work with The Bats are available online as part of Mind Cure Records archival series.
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Life on Mars
"One of the advantages to being a novelist is removing oneself from the chatter of the fray and trying to get a read and a historical context on what’s happening in one’s own time." The Guardian interviews Rachel Kushner about women's prisons, remorse, and her new novel, The Mars Room. Pair with: our review calls Kushner's latest a "brutal, unforgiving, and often grimly funny tour de force of wasted lives."
Passions, Hobbies. Same Thing, Right?
It’s the weekend, and you know what that means. Time to explore your creative passions. That’s right! Find what you want to do and “dive in a full 10 percent and spend the other 90 torturing yourself because you know damn well that it’s far too late to make a drastic career change, and that you’re stuck on this mind-numbing path for the rest of your life.”
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The New Vintage
Is hardcover the new vinyl? Over at The Literary Hub, Yahdon Israel argues for the irreplaceable magic of tactility and print books: "There’s something gratifying about being able to underline a sentence or write a response in the margin of a book, knowing with certainty that it will be there later. I can’t get that guarantee from a phone. My data could be hacked, a new upgrade could wipe its memory, my battery could die mid-sentence and cause me to lose everything I’ve typed. They say that what goes up into the Cloud must come down, but 'they' can’t always be trusted—least of all with the things I value most, my books."
The Long Birthday
On this day 124 years ago Raymond Chandler, hardest of the hard-boiled, was born. To celebrate the father of Philip Marlowe see these letters Chandler wrote to some of his contemporaries, listen to Chandler's interview with Ian Fleming, and enjoy a couple classic Chandlerisms. Most importantly, read "The Simple Art of Murder," the greatest essay about the mystery novel ever written.
Nowhere, Indiana
"Only the moon can judge Indiana. It’s a state that mostly gets ignored, and occasionally ridiculed, by the rest of the country, but no matter. Anyone is welcome to come here and see a reflection of themselves in the unlikeliest places, no matter what any law says." Adam Fleming Petty on "Writing from the Nowhere State."
Just finished Lacey’s novel. Elyria is a fascinating character, who indeed is “post-wounded.” She’s also mentally ill.