Publishers Weekly reports from the Joan Didion memorial service, which took place last week at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Speakers included Didion’s Knopf editor Shelley Wanger; New Yorker editor David Remnick; author and musician Patti Smith; actor Vanessa Redgrave; politician Jerry Brown; poet Kevin Young; and writers Hilton Als, Susanna Moore, Jia Tolentino, and Calvin Trillin. Nic Rowan provides his account of the Didion memorial at The Lamp: “The celebration, after all, was a publishing house’s attempt at making the myth of Didion as the Last All-American Writer.”
This fall, Random House will publish The January 6th Report: The Findings of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, with a foreword by California congressman Adam Schiff. The publisher says the book will be “the official report of the investigation into the attack—perhaps the most vital congressional investigation in American history—with exhibits and witness testimony.”
At the New Yorker, Katie Waldman talks with Joyce Carol Oates about her views on gender, fiction, and Andrew Dominik’s new film adaptation of her novel Blonde, based on the life of Marilyn Monroe.
This November, to promote her new memoir The Light We Carry, Michelle Obama will go on a six-city speaking tour.
Tomorrow (Tuesday) at McNally Jackson bookstore at 7pm, Alexandra Kleeman (Something New Under the Sun) will talk with fellow novelist Mona Awad, author of All’s Well. You can register to attend here.
