At what point do Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and the 1990 cinematic classic House Party intersect? Many points, actually, according to this incisive comparison of the two done by Sean Gill for The Offing. If anything, it goes on to prove just how difficult it is to plan a successful party.
Virginia Woolf Meets House Party
“Almost Like the Blues”
Recommended reading (and listening): “Almost Like the Blues” by Leonard Cohen.
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Top Underdog
“[H]e is a true, unrepentant nerd, who has only ever been looking for his people.” Buzzfeed‘s Doree Shafrir talks with Michael Chabon (and his wife, the writer Ayelet Waldman) about being a good literary citizen, his life in letters, and his new “fictional memoir” Moonglow.
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“The realization that none of us can ever be free from ourselves”
Mary Ruefle wrote an outstanding essay on her development as a writer. “I remember the first time I realized the world we are born into,” she writes, “is not the one we leave.”
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Say My Name
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Sympathy for All
Back in April, our own Sonya Chung linked to an excerpt on Bloom of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, then featured on the cover of the Sunday Times Book Review. At Bookforum, Lisa Locascio reads the book, drawing comparisons to Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker and Hari Kunzru’s The Impressionist.
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