The weirdest book title of the year prize has been awarded. It’s no Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice, but it’s still pretty weird.
Maud Newton is in top form in her riff from this weekend’s New York Times Magazine, about Jews and Christians and Christians who fetishize Jews and the complexity interfaith dialogues—and perhaps, in some cases “theft” or at least “misappropriation” are better words than “dialogue” to describe what’s going on.
I’m pretty excited to find some time to read Aleksandar Hemon’s memoir, The Book of My Lives. I think I’ve been pretty honest about my weakness for essayistic memoir—hell, essayistic novels, literature in general. I love the way Steven Galloway put it: “The book consists of short, episodic essays, none longer than 10 or 15 pages, and while, as the book goes on, you feel them connecting in loose ways, they are all small bits of a life, spoonfuls from a larger bowl.” And then of course, the way Hemon himself does: “as far as storytelling, it’s always about the problem I have at hand, ‘How do I get out of this fucking hole.’ And there are always many holes, until there aren’t.”
Apparently there are four novels coming out about Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, but mostly Zelda, this year. Four.
