Andrew LaVallee talks with friends and family of the late fiction writer Anthony Veasna So about the bittersweet release of his debut story collection; Afterparties “is now poised for the kind of buzzy release rare for debut collections.” Mark Krotov, publisher of n+1 and an early champion of So’s, said of his writing: “That combination of formal adventurousness and this feel for the texture and the sounds and the smells of day-to-day life—I find that quite rare.” While So’s incomplete novel will not be published as planned, Ecco will publish a book including chapters from the novel and nonfiction essays by So.
In Harper’s Magazine, Rebecca Panovka revists the Trump-era fascination with Hannah Arendt, writing that many commenters took the wrong lessons from Arendt’s work: “In ‘Truth and Politics,’ Arendt is not warning about liars in Washington. She is worried, rather, about a state of affairs in which a singular, unquestioned image has been installed in place of reality.”
At New York magazine, Alex Shephard writes about the coming new wave of Trump books. Shephard notes that there’s a predictable pattern to how books about the former president are received: “Excerpts and scoops would be published in tip sheets, newspapers, and magazines. Trump would respond by calling the author a hack and a liar. Sales shot upward before falling just as quickly.”
Tonight at 7pm EDT, Warby Parker is hosting an in-person event in Brooklyn with Hermione Hoby talking about her new novel, Virtue, with Leslie Jamison. The event will also be streamed for free online.
In the New Yorker, Julian Lucas profiles Ishmael Reed, the poet, novelist, and playwright. Lucas points out that while Reed is known as a satirist, “There’s always been more to Reed than subversion and caricature. Laughter, in his books, unearths legacies suppressed by prejudice, élitism, and mass-media coöptation.”
Random House announced yesterday that it will be publishing a memoir by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, late next year. The book is being written with J. R. Moehringer, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and ghost writer of Andre Agassi’s autobiography, as well as the author of The Tender Bar.
