Angela’s Ashes, Remembrance of Things Past, Lolita, and Jaws top the Los Angeles Times’ list of books you definitely don’t want to read at the beach.
HarperCollins is taunting readers with serialized excerpts from the “enhanced e-book” edition of Michael Chabon’s forthcoming novel, Telegraph Avenue. The book—Chabon’s first in five years—is billed as “an intimate epic, a NorCal Middlemarch set to the funky beat of classic vinyl soul-jazz and pulsing with a virtuosic, pyrotechnical style all of its own.” The first serial is be available to download for free today.
At NPR, David Orr reflects on the birth of a genre—the “poetry of parenthood.”
The Millions’ in-house writing instructor offers advice on how to move from scene to scene without resorting to clumsy transitions.
The Cygnus Ensemble has composed three new compositions based on Samuel Beckett’s one-act plays “Footfalls,” “Ohio Impromptu,” and “Catastrophe.” The occasion is a new production, “Sounding Beckett,” which will be performed off-Broadway this September.
Tonight at the Fales Library at NYU, there’s a book launch and reading for Cynthia Carr’s long-awaited biography Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz. As Luc Sante writes in the new Bookforum, “Carr’s book is unimprovable as a biography—thorough, measured, beautifully written, loving but not uncritical.” For the occasion, Fales will display treasures from their David Wojnarowicz archives, such as the Rimbaud mask made famous by Wojnarowicz’s photo series, as well as other photos, artwork, and ephemera from the artist’s life.
