Afternoon Bites: “About Cherry” In NYC, Vintage Contemporaries, Mat Johnson Interviews Victor LaValle, and More

Junot Díaz is profiled by Michele Filgate for Capital New York, and in the process says some deeply insightful things about perceptions of genre. Everything you’ve wanted to know about Vintage Contemporaries… Former roommates Mat Johnson and Victor LaValle chatted for Bookforum. A musical adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home is in the works. Stephen Elliott’s film About Cherry opens in New York on September 21st. Dan Ruccia on the reissue of Don Cherry’s Organic Music Society. (So that we’re clear, that’s […]

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Indexing: Mat Johnson, Auden, Baraka, and Lyndon Johnson?

Tobias Carroll A recommendation from Jessica at Greenlight Bookstore led me to pick up Mat Johnson’s Pym, which I read earlier this week. On the surface, the description reads like an archetypal adventure story: an academic leading an expedition to Antarctica in search of a lost civilization. And that description does, in fact, serve to describe this novel. Except that Johnson’s working on a number of levels: this is at once an adventure story, an academic comedy, a satire of […]

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