Weekend Bites: Bernard Malamud’s Best Work, Jennifer Gilmore, James Turrell Profiled, Bob Mould on Phoenix, and More

Bernard Malamud would have been 99 this weekend. Tablet‘s Adam Chandler took a straw poll to learn what is considered to be his best work. Lauren Elkin on why Anne Boelyn continues to obsess us. Jennifer Gilmore: interviewed at The Paris Review. Bryan Waterman reviewed Richard Hell’s memoir, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp. Harper’s Bazaar interviewed James Turrell about his life and work. Bob Mould on Phoenix. Linda Besner on the ethics of publishing posthumous work. Follow Vol. 1 Brooklyn […]

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Afternoon Bites: Chickfactor 21 Lineup, Percival Everett, Mexico City Cuisine, and More

The lineup for Chickfactor 21 — The Pastels! Dump! Future Bible Heroes! — looks incredible. “Those who do grant Percival Everett by Virgil Russell its ultimate formal integrity and follow it through to the end will actually find that the story it tells, however obliquely, and the subject it addresses, however indistinctly, are among the most emotionally engaging, even moving, in Everett’s fiction.” Daniel Green on Percival Everett. Julian Darius looks at Warren Ellis’s thematic trilogy of superhero books: No Hero, Black Summer, and Supergod. […]

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Trying to Adopt Without Going Crazy: A Review of Jennifer Gilmore’s “The Mothers”

The Mothers by Jennifer Gilmore Scribner; 288 p. There’s plenty of conversation about the adoption crisis in America, but few people can understand just how fraught the process is for prospective parents. Except, that is, for the parents themselves. Usually, they have already exhausted other options, like natural childbirth, which for 7.1 percent or 2.8 million married couples, is impossible. Perhaps the parents have already tried keeping a romance-killing sex calendar, to time things to coincide with the woman’s biological […]

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