Overlooked 2011 Pulitzer contenders?
The New York Times Magazine asked some writers and critics, including me, which 2011 novel they’d have given the Pulitzer to. I say Mat Johnson’s Pym. Nominate your choice here.
Travel and other journals and happenings
I leave for Berlin and Amsterdam a week from today and meanwhile am slammed at work-work and with other work, so I keep not being able to post any of the things I intend to write here. But for the first time since my college days, I’ve been keeping a journal. Actually, I’ve been keeping...
On heaven, hell, certainty, and doubt
“My Son Went to Heaven, and All I Got Was a No. 1 Best Seller,” my essay about Heaven is For Real, my own fundamentalist background, and my lifelong doubt, appeared in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine, underneath this illustration...
My conversation with Alison Bechdel
“People ask me, was writing Fun Home therapeutic? And I feel like, yes it was, but that’s kind of like asking somebody if swimming the English Channel was a good workout for them. That’s not why they did it — of course it was a good workout.” The great Alison Bechdel and I spoke on...
Talking with Ron Rash, April 25, 7 p.m.
“Almost all of the great books are regional books,” Ron Rash (Serena) has said. “Landscape is destiny.” We’ll be talking about his latest novel, The Cove, on April 25, at McNally Jackson.
Reading with Alex Chee at KGB: Tuesday, April 10
Tuesday night I’m reading with Alexander Chee at the KGB Bar for the True Story Nonfiction Series. Both of our essays are about family mysteries, conversations across generations, and I promise you, Alex’s is gorgeous and you want to hear ...
Reading with Alex Chee at KGB: Tuesday, April 10
Tuesday night I’m reading with Alexander Chee at the KGB Bar for the True Story Nonfiction Series. Both of our essays are about family mysteries, conversations across generations, and I promise you, Alex’s is gorgeous and you want to hear ...
Reading with Alex Chee at KGB: Tuesday, April 10
Tuesday night I’m reading with Alexander Chee at the KGB Bar for the True Story Nonfiction Series. Both of our essays are about family mysteries, conversations across generations, and I promise you, Alex’s is gorgeous and you want to hear ...
R.I.P. Harry Crews, my former teacher
In his fiction and in his life, Harry Crews empathized most with the people who needed it most: the freaks, the fuck-ups, people who’d been broken by loss of one kind or another. Crews died yesterday, at age 76. As his son Byron told The Daily’s Claire Howorth, “[he] put more miles on the Chevy...
Upcoming: In Indianapolis and New York
I’m finishing up some longer projects and running around for the next little while. Wednesday night, March 28, I’ll be speaking at Butler University, in Indianapolis. On April 10, I read with the amazing Alexander Chee for KGB Bar’s nonfiction series. And I might as well be living at my favorite bookstore in April. On...
Class by association
My friend Philip Connors’ excellent Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout, an Orion Prize finalist, is out in paperback. Our Paris Review interview, which spilled over onto this site, is included.
Headed back to Faulkner Country tomorrow
The last time I visited Oxford, Mississippi, at the end of a trip through ancestral haunts in the Delta, I stopped by Faulkner’s grave, Rowan Oak, and Square Books, and consumed my weight in sweet tea and fried catfish with my favorite aunt. I aim to do some of the same things this weekend, when...
