Earlier this month, I wrote about Louis Menand’s recent New Yorker piece about The Life of Saul Bellow, a new biography of the Nobel laureate by Zachary Leader. Now, in the LRB, Andrew O’Hagan reads the book. Sample quote: “Bellow’s community was his subject and his subject was his voice.”
The Other Saul
The David Foster Wallace Conference
The Howling Fantods live-blogged last week’s DFW conference at CUNY.
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It Can Happen Here
“It was astonishing. Utterly astonishing. Everyone of them seemed . . . entranced by him.” Sometimes older books get a second life given contemporary contexts; such is the case with Sinclair Lewis‘s 1935 It Can’t Happen Here, reports Time. The book, which was written as Hitler came to power, has sold out online. See also this New Yorker piece about a recent stage adaptation of Lewis’s semi-satirical novel.
Tuesday New Release Day: Chabon, Díaz, Straight, Boianjiu, Powers, Byrne, Woodward
Another big week for books is headlined by Michael Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue (the book’s opening lines) and Junot Díaz’s This Is How You Lose Her. Also out are Susan Straight’s Between Heaven and Here, touted debuts The People of Forever Are Not Afraid by Shani Boianjiu and The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers, How Music Works by Talking Heads frontman David Byrne, and Bob Woodward’s latest Beltway tick-tock The Price of Politics.
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Murakami’s Jazz
Haruki Murakami’s love for jazz is no secret – he used to own a jazz bar, he’s written full essay collections on the music, and his books are peppered with references to jazz songs and musicians. How fitting, then, that there’s finally a playlist of jazz songs mentioned in Murakami’s writings. Pair with our many past essays on Murakami.
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