“Raymond Chandler did not invent the private eye — Dashiell Hammett and a few others got there first. But his vision is the one that caught the public eye and stuck most indelibly in the imagination, like — in one of his aromatic metaphors — ‘a tarantula on a slice of angel food.’” On a new biography of the man behind Phillip Marlowe.
Like a Nun in a Motorcar
The Women
Director Jamieson Fry follows up–and perhaps surpasses–his incredible book trailer for Dan Chaon’s Await Your Reply with this one for The Women by T.C. Boyle
Still Fighting It
The “Albums of Our Lives” series from The Rumpus has produced a couple gems. In this newest edition to the series, Andrea Laurion takes on the Ben Folds classic Rockin’ the Suburbs.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Kennedy; Galloway; Jones; Jonasson; Hilst; Bond; Spark
Out this week: All the Rage by A.L. Kennedy; The Confabulist by Stephen Galloway; Fallout by Sadie Jones; The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden by Jonas Jonasson; With My Dog Eyes by Hilda Hilst; Ruby by Cynthia Bond; and The Informed Air by Muriel Spark. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great 2014 Book Preview.
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More NYC books
If you haven’t gotten enough of literary New York quite yet, here’s what the Guardian (UK) thinks you should be reading about “the American dream concretised in a shimmering mirage, the burgeoning metropolis of hope built on foundations of money, drugs and exploitation.” Less judgmentally, Grantland’s Kevin Nguyen focuses on two new books set in Queens, recommending High As the Horses’ Bridles by The Millions’ own Scott Cheshire, which is no Brooklyn hipster novel: his opening scene (“among the finest published this year”) has a 12-year-old offering a prophecy of Armageddon.
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