At the New Yorker, South African novelist and Nobel–winner Nadine Gordimer remembers Nelson Mandela: “Not a figure carved in stone but a tall man, of flesh and blood, whose suffering had made him not vengeful but still more human.”
The New York Times reports on a recent trip President Obama took to Politics and Prose bookstore in DC, where he bought nearly two dozen books. The Times reporter writes that the titles offer “a rare window into the president’s mind,” and notes, “unlike many of his predecessors, who devoured American history and biographies, Mr. Obama’s tastes lean toward the literary.” So, what can we learn by the president’s choice of, say, James Salter’s All That Is, Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, or Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland? Lahiri offers this observation: “He has a sort of double vision of America as I do, as many people do, many people who have been both brought up and bred within America but also have a different perspective of the country,” Ms. Lahiri says. “In a sense, part of him comes from outside America and he embodies both that contradiction and that richness.”
Are you a Joan Didion expert? The Los Angeles Times tests your knowledge with a quiz.
. Hainley will be in conversation with Lisa Lapinski and Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer, and Sturtevant’s work is on display in the gallery.
Black Francis, one of the founders of The Pixies, is working on a graphic novel titled The Good Inn. The book will be “a fantastical piece of illustrated fiction based on a yet-to-be-written soundtrack to a movie that doesn’t yet exist,” and will follow a teenage boy as he navigates “past homicidal gypsies, combative soldiers and porn-peddling peasants, he takes refuge in a secluded inn, where he finds himself centre stage in the making of the world’s first narrative pornographic film.”
“It was the Best of Times…But You Won’t Believe What Other Kinds of Times It Is, Too.”