“From this bleak backdrop unspools West Of Sunset, Stewart O’Nan’s sparkling and frequently delightful fictionalized take on those years. It’s a setting that’s near impossible for culture buffs to resist; for a certain subset of nerd, this is a sort of literary Avengers, collecting Ernest Hemingway and Dorothy Parker alongside O’Nan’s delicate and sensitive portrayals of Fitzgerald and wife Zelda, to say nothing of Humphrey Bogart and a cameo by Katharine Hepburn, eating soup.”
Assemble
Carol Hughes to Write Memoir
Ted Hughes’s widow, Carol Hughes, intends to write a memoir about her marriage to the former poet laureate.
Tuesday New Release Day
Lots of diet books among the new releases these days (in preparation for the post-holiday food guilt one assumes), but readers will also find a vibrant new "biography-in-collage" out this week, Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss.
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The Social Function of the Novel
Recommended reading: Tim Parks asks "what is the social function of the novel?"
Archer as Animated Comix
Charles Bock traces the lineage of FX’s Archer past fellow animated shows like The Simpsons and all the way back to comics. Or, more specifically, Bock traces the lineage back to comix, “cartoons for adults — or, rather, for those above the age of consent.”
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