Poet, critic, and biographer Stanley Crouch has died at the age of seventy-four. Crouch, who received a MacArthur “Genius” award as well as many other honors, was best known for his writing on jazz and as a cofounder of Jazz at Lincoln Center. His books include Considering Genius and Kansas City Lightning. As a critic for the Village Voice, the New York Times, the Daily News, and JazzTimes, Crouch was famed for his fiery combativeness. As Jelani Cobb put it on Twitter: “ I spent a good part of my 20s arguing with #StanleyCrouch in my head. I disagreed with him about a LOT. But I also respected him and our eventual in-person arguments challenged me and made me a better writer. I’m profoundly saddened by his passing and will miss him greatly.” At NPR, Ethan Iverson notes, “ He was a sharp-tongued devil but he believed in humanity and in progress. He signed every correspondence with his trademark ‘V.I.A.,’ standing for: ‘Victory Is Assured.’”
The 2020 National Book Award longlists for translated literature and poetry have been announced.
LitHub has posted a Fall book preview, with new titles by Jill Lepore, Bryan Washington, Marilynne Robinson, and many more.
The New York Times has an inside look at how the Booker Prize was judged after the pandemic hit this year. The five judges read 162 submissions each, and moved to monthly Zoom meetings this spring. One of the judges, Lemn Sissay, told the Times, “There was nothing to do but read. There will never, ever, be a judging panel that has so much time to just focus on the books.”
The first volume of Barack Obama’s memoir will be released on November 17. The book is more than seven hundred pages and will be released in twenty-five languages.
Tonight via Zoom, Greenlight Bookstore and the Brooklyn Public Library are hosting Jill Lepore in conversation with danah boyd.
