Tobias Carroll

Political Histories: On Ronnie A. Grinberg’s “Write like a Man”

November 20, 2024 No Comments

"Write like a Man"

Increasingly, the podcast Know Your Enemy has become one of my go-to sources for book recommendations. Sometimes this involves going to the backlist, particularly when it comes to Garry Wills; sometimes it involves checking out a more recent work, particularly when its author was a KYE guest. That’s how I came to read Ronnie A. Grinberg’s Write like a Man: Jewish Masculinity and the New York Intellectuals. That’s an imposing title, but the book itself is eminently readable; more than that, it’s also deeply relevant, chronicling a compelling blend of literature, politics, and interpersonal rivalries.

Books, Featured, Interviews

Restless Ghosts and Haunted Places: An Interview With Corey Farrenkopf

November 14, 2024 No Comments

Coret Farrenkopf

When I first encountered Corey Farrenkopf online, it was due in part to his literary profile — he’s a writer, an interviewer, and a librarian with a wide-ranging sense of the uncanny. This year brought with it the release of his deubt novel Living in Cemeteries, set in a world similar to our own with one key difference: restless spirits sometimes take revenge on the living for the sins of their ancestors. It’s a wonderfully disquieting book, and we discussed its origins, its evolution, and what’s next for him.

Books, Featured, Interviews

J.M. Tyree on Hitchcock, Horror, and “The Haunted Screen”

October 28, 2024 No Comments

J.M. Tyree

There’s a long and storied history of tales of American academics becoming unmoored far from home. J.M. Tyree’s The Haunted Screen is an impressive entry in this literary lineage: its protagonist is dealing with the erosion of his marriage and a the echoes of a past relationship, even as he muses on the influence of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. There’s also a possibly malevolent presence lurking in the woods and a sense that several characters know more than they’re letting on; it’s a concentrated dose of heady musings and travels into the uncanny. I spoke with Tyree about writing the book, the ways film can inform literature, and the nature of haunting.

Books, Featured, Interviews

Kristopher Jansma On Memory, Trauma, and the Making of “Our Narrow Hiding Places”

October 11, 2024 No Comments

Kristopher Jansma

I’ve long been an admirer of Kristopher Jansma’s fiction and the way it blends an empathic view of the world with an abundance of stylistic verve. His new novel Our Narrow Hiding Places explores the complicated history of one family, beginning with the Nazi occupation of Holland and continuing on to the present day. (As an added bonus, Jansma and I grew up in adjoining New Jersey towns.) I spoke with him about his new book’s evolution, the real-life history he drew from when writing it, and his forthcoming nonfiction book Revisionaries.

Books, Featured, Interviews

Getting Audacious With Ryan Chapman

October 9, 2024 No Comments

Ryan Chapman

Reading Ryan Chapman’s fiction involves immersion in very specific milieus — including, for his most recent novel The Audacity, an exclusive gathering of the world’s wealthiest people, a kind of 1% of the 1%. Just before he jets off to one such gathering, protagonist Guy Sarvananthan learns that his wife’s highly-touted startup was not exactly honest with investors about the viability of its business, and that she’s now missing and presumed deceased. What emerges is a heady book of big ideas laced with a comedy of manners that moves with an enticing momentum. I spoke with Chapman about writing The Audacity and the challenges it posed.

Books, Featured, Interviews, music

The Soil As Collaborator: An Interview With Erland Cooper

September 24, 2024 No Comments

Erland Cooper

Composer Erland Cooper did something unexpected with the recordings that would become his new album Carve the Runes Then Be Content With Silence: he buried them. For several years, in fact, until they were discovered by someone who’d followed the clues Cooper had left to the master tapes’ location. The result is a gorgous, melancholic array of music, interspersed with poetry and given a more textured quality from their time underground. I spoke with Cooper about this unusual process and the role of collaboration in his work.

Books, Featured, Interviews, music

Collages, Calvino, and Catchy Pop Songs: Chatting with Smug Brothers

September 16, 2024 No Comments

Smug Brothers

I’m not sure when I first picked up In the Book of Bad Ideas, the 2023 album from Ohio’s Smug Brothers, but the album made a huge impression on me from the outset. It abounds with the sort of off-kilter indie rock that’s both viscerally satisfying and singularly compelling. In advance of a tour that will bring them to Brooklyn (Young Ethel’s on November 9!), I spoke with singer-guitarist Kyle Melton about the band’s new EP, Another Bar Behind the Night, their penchant for collage, and the works of Italo Calvino.

Books, Featured, Interviews

Literary Ghosts of Old Brooklyn: An Interview With Ian S. Maloney

September 9, 2024 No Comments

Ian S. Maloney

The past looms large in Ian Maloney’s novel South Brooklyn Exterminating — both through the novel’s setting in the recent past and the ways in which it invokes the rich literary history of New York City. It follows several years in the life of its protagonist, from his childhood assisting his father in the field of pest control to his gradual awareness of unsettling truths about their family. I spoke with Maloney about the novel’s genesis, its evolution, and writing about a part of Brooklyn that isn’t always in the spotlight.