In our afternoon reading: new Anne Carson fiction, Rahawa Haile on short fiction, memories of Harry Nilsson, and more.
Indexing: On Spark, Comyns, Judt, Buckley 2X, Steve Martin, y más!
Tobias Carroll When I was in the midst of my holiday shopping, I picked up a copy of Muriel Spark’s Not to Disturb at Brooklyn’s Greenlight Bookstore. I read (and was floored by) Spark’s Memento Mori earlier in the year; Not to Disturb is a bit less resonant but deeply enjoyable. It’s very Gothic — locked rooms, sinister plots, and multiple references to “him in the attic” — but there’s a Richard Lester-esque briskness at work as well.
Christopher Buckley Just Made a new Best Friend
Christopher Buckley is blown away by Tom Rachman’s boyish good looks and also really likes his book, The Imperfectionists: “I still haven’t answered that question, nor do I know how someone so young — Rachman turns out to be 35, though he looks even younger in his author photo — could have acquired such a precocious grasp of human foibles.”