interviews June 27, 2014

Bookforum talks with Thomas Beller

J.D. Salinger spent nearly the last sixty years of his life as a recluse, attempting to outrun the fame brought by his celebrated first novel, The Catcher in the Rye. In Thomas Beller’s new biography, J.D. Salinger: The Escape Artist, Salinger’s life appears as a triptych, in which the entire last half of Salinger’s life—but only one story, “Hapworth 16, 1924”—is relegated to the final panel.

J.D. Salinger spent nearly the last sixty years of his life as a recluse, attempting to outrun the fame brought by his celebrated first novel, The Catcher in the Rye (1951). In Thomas Beller’s new biography, J.D. Salinger: The Escape Artist, Salinger’s life appears as a triptych, in which the entire last half of Salinger’s life—but only one story, “Hapworth 16, 1924”—is relegated to the final panel. The first panel includes Salinger’s early stories (1940-1948), and “Slight Rebellion off Madison,” which later formed the basis for Catcher. The second panel describes the height of Salinger’s fame

interviews April 23, 2014

Bookforum talks with Carl Wilson

What does it mean to have good taste? Is the idea of taste relevant anymore? Music critic Carl Wilson reflects on these questions in his 2007 “case study” of Céline Dion, Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste.

What does it mean to have good taste? Is the idea of taste relevant anymore? Music critic Carl Wilson reflects on these questions in 2007's Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, a “case study” of Céline Dion. The book is part of Continuum’s 33 1/3 series—pocket-sized books about a single album, usually staples of the rock-crit canon. Let’s Talk About Love takes on new life this year with the publication of an expanded edition that includes thirteen additional essays from well-known writers and musicians. Like his subject, Céline, Wilson is a native Canadian; he has been a writer

culture April 09, 2014

The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld by Justin Hocking

The euphoric early stages of living in New York feel like riding the peak of a wave. The exhilaration is fundamentally transient: the wave will inevitably break. Justin Hocking's new memoir is about learning what he can and cannot deal with, what he is and isn't willing to give up, for the sake of life in a difficult city.

The “leaving New York” essay has become its own mini-genre. Joan Didion’s 1967 elegy to her time in the city, “Goodbye to All That,” was the pioneer of the form. In a 2013 collection named after Didion’s piece, twenty-eight writers also share how New York lost its luster. This year, Justin Hocking’s new memoir, The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld, takes up the tradition, with another look at the ways in which the young and sort-of-young work out a relationship with their “suffocating, selfish mistress,” as Andrew Sullivan has called the city.

Just after turning thirty, Hocking, a

interviews February 12, 2014

Bookforum talks with Rabih Alameddine

Rabih Alameddine’s latest novel, An Unnecessary Woman, is about Aaliya Sohbi, a 72-year-old recluse and translator, The novel begins with Aaliya accidently dying her hair blue, and covers what seems to be just a few days of her life, Her thoughts are saturated with literature, and often turn to her semi-senile mother, her troubled best friend, Hannah, and the landscape of the ever-changing Beirut.

Rabih Alameddine’s latest novel, An Unnecessary Woman, is about Aaliya Sohbi, a 72-year-old recluse and translator. The novel begins with Aaliya accidently dying her hair blue, and covers what seems to be just a few days of her life. Her thoughts are saturated with literature, and often turn to her semi-senile mother, her troubled best friend, Hannah, and the landscape of the ever-changing Beirut. An intricate portrait of a singular character, An Unnecessary Woman brings you right to into the depths of the mind of an introvert, questioning the value of living for literature alone. Alameddine,

culture January 27, 2014

On Such a Full Sea by Chang-rae Lee

Chang-rae Lee’s new novel On Such a Full Sea takes its title from a line in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, in which the traitor, Brutus, refuses to believe that fate trumps free will: “On such a full sea are we now afloat / And we must take the current when it serves / Or lose our ventures.” Lee’s protagonist, named Fan, draws on a similar sense of purpose in the face of an outcome she seems all but destined to meet.

Chang-rae Lee’s new novel On Such a Full Sea takes its title from a line in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, in which the traitor, Brutus, refuses to believe that fate trumps free will: “On such a full sea are we now afloat / And we must take the current when it serves / Or lose our ventures.” Lee’s protagonist, named Fan, draws on a similar sense of purpose in the face of an outcome she seems all but destined to meet.

On Such a Full Sea is Lee’s fifth novel in twenty years, and his first to depart from the experience of isolation and alienation among immigrants. Here, the immigrants are portrayed

Aviel Kanter