Listening to Television; when novelists write video games; the best music heard at CMJ; Nico Muhly’s new opera reviewed; and more.
Revisiting conspiracy thrillers, a look at a new biography of Elliott Smith, out-quipping the mayor, an interview with Marisha Pessl, and more.
It seems paradoxical to write about Witold Gombrowicz’s Diary here. At well over seven hundred pages, spanning multiple decades and the writing of several major literary works of the 20th century, and encompassing correspondence, provocation, essays on aesthetics, and thoughts on Polish literature and the role of the expatriate artist, there’d still be uncovered space if we dedicated a week of Vol.1 to musings on it. Still: having sat down with it, I feel compelled to recommend it; Gombrowicz was a […]
Like a lot of readers I know, I read — devoured, maybe — Jesse Barron’s interview with Karl Ove Knausgaard last weekend. I’d been reading the second part of his six-volume memoir/novel/whatever he prefers to call it My Struggle, subtitled A Man In Love. I’d read the first part of said work last year, along with his novel A Time For Everything; both were on my list of the best books I’d read in 2012.