The New York Review of Books has published a new story by master short fiction writer Deborah Eisenberg. In the story, a young boy named Adam looks through his family’s photo album and finds an exciting revelation.
This weekend’s New York Times Magazine story by Jose Vargas, in which he confesses to falsifying documents to illegally work as a US journalist for years, has been met with sharply conflicting reactions in the media world.
Elizabeth Bishop refused to be a token woman in all-male poetry anthologies, and didn’t want to be in all-female collections, either, writing: “Undoubtedly gender does play an important role in the making of any art, but art is art, and to separate writings, paintings, musical compositions, etc., into two sexes is to emphasize values in them that are not art.”
In Elizabeth Gumport’s n+1 essay, “Against Reviews,” she expresses her misgivings about the form in the hyperbolic voice of a weary reviewer who has marched through one plot summary too many, culminating in a quote sure to be muttered by young freelancers everywhere: “Like hazing, reviewing is inflicted by the old and popular on the young and weak, who are told that before they can succeed at their chosen pursuit they must endure certain traditional trials.” At the Los Angeles Review of Books, editor Tom Lutz responds.
Tonight, the Crosby Street Hotel is screening the 1994 film Pulp Fiction, as part of their “Writers on Film” series. The film’s treatment of time was an important influence on Jennifer Egan’s 2011 novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad. Egan will discuss the film with Michael Maren after the showing, and sign copies of her Pulitzer-Prize winning book.
