In our morning reading: Eileen Myles and Cole Pulice on collaborating, an interview with Kevin Maloney, and more.
Transcendence Has a Cost: On Tara Isabella Burton’s “Here In Avalon”
In October, I sat inside James Turrell’s installation Hind Sight for the first time. This is what it was like: I followed a railing along a winding pathway before arriving at a chair, where I sat. I then stared across the room at something imperceptible: something made out of light, something not designed to be perceived by human eyes under normal light. I left the room with a greater understanding of friends and family who have had genuinely religious experiences. In Hind Sight, there was the sense of perceiving something utterly ineffable and yet utterly present.
Constant Delirium: Reading Jean-Pierre Martinet’s “With Their Hearts In Their Boots”
Credit where credit is due: I picked up Jean-Pierre Martinet’s With Their Hearts In Their Boots (translated by Alex Andriesse) in no small part due to the fact that its introduction was by William Boyle. Boyle’s cultural recommendations, whether literary or cinematic, are often spot-on, and reading his description of this “[h]hard-boiled, funny, dangerous” short novel piqued my interest for what was to follow.
Political Histories: On Ronnie A. Grinberg’s “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.
Restless Ghosts and Haunted Places: An Interview With Corey 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.
J.M. Tyree on Hitchcock, Horror, and “The Haunted Screen”
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.
Kristopher Jansma On Memory, Trauma, and the Making of “Our Narrow Hiding Places”
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.
Getting Audacious With 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.