“The faux-democratic ideal of plain-spokenness, the sense that a novelist should not write too beautifully or he sacrifices some vaguely articulated, semi-mystical claim to honesty, is not a million miles away from the Sarah Palin-ish suspicion of east coast liberals, or a Harvard education, or people who know the dates of wars.” – Katie Roiphe feels it necessary to go on the defensive for John Updike on the anniversary of his death. Ben Shattuck at The Morning News on historians […]
Bill Callahan’s Book, Letters to Emma Bowlcut, is out in Seventeen Days
One of my favorite songwriters, Bill Callahan (formerly known as Smog), has a book coming up on Drag City: Letters to Emma Bowlcut , an epistolary novelette, collects sixty two letters from a nameless protagonist to a woman he saw at a party. The letters form the seduction, in sifting the loose, disparate details of his day to day — the desires, the frustrations, the joys. The self as depicted through emotional weather updates, social observations, anecdotes, advice, and well-timed punchlines. Letters to Emma […]