For The New Yorker, Naomi Fry reflects on celebrated children’s writer and illustrator Tomie dePaola, who died at the end of March. As the author of more than 270 works for children, dePaola leaves behind a sprawling legacy. “The universe of dePaola’s books is moral but not moralistic,” Fry writes. “There is disarray in it, and people are imperfect and can make mistakes, but there is goodness, too, and a larger sense that, since an omniscient narrator is often able to shepherd the books’ protagonists to safety, the same might perhaps prove true, by extension, for the lives of these books’ readers.”
Remembering Tomie dePaola
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Hold Off on Your Coronavirus Novel, Please
Has quarantine cabin fever driven you to write a COVID-19-inspired novel? Sloane Crosley kindly asks you to put it aside—just for now.
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On the Reading That Drags On and On
Everyone’s been there: the bookstore event at which the reader drones on and on. The Observer shares some reading horror stories (and a few successes). Sarah McNally of NYC’s McNally Jackson bookstore says, “The traditional reading format is broken.”
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The Library of the Future
If you’re looking forward to the next Margaret Atwood novel, you’ll have to wait a century. Atwood is the first author to participate in the Future Library project, in which 100 authors will write 100 original manuscripts to be published 100 years from now. We’re envious of our grandchildren. If you’d like an Atwood fix sooner, her short story collection Stone Mattress: Nine Tales comes out next week.
Two Good Things
USA Today is running an excerpt of Denis Johnson’s much buzzed about new doorstop Tree of Smoke.The New Yorker Food Issue, to my mind the highlight of the New Yorker publishing year, has arrived. Somehow I look forward to this one as much as I did the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue when I was twelve. Much of the good stuff isn’t online, but you can get a taste of the food writing on offer with a series of short essays under theme “Family Dinner.” Aleksandar Hemon, Gary Shteyngart, Nell Freudenberger, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, David Sedaris, Anthony Lane, and Donald Antrim are on the menu.
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The Vertical Legacy of Colson Whitehead’s ‘The Intuitionist’
Neil Serven looks back on Colson Whitehead's debut novel, The Intuitionist, which follows an elevator inspector in a city of skyscrapers.
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