John Wray on pen names, the best film adaptations of Dostoevsky’s work, thoughts on the new Ellen Willis collection, talking with Rebecca Solnit, and more.
In the span of three novels, John Wray has covered an impressive range of historical, stylistic, and emotional ground. He’s equally at home tracking the parallel paths of an unstable teen and the dogged police officer tracking him across contemporary New York (Lowboy) as he is describing an man’s horror, upon returning to his Austrian hometown in the 1930s, to discover widespread acceptance of fascism among old acquaintances (The Right Hand of Sleep). I first met Wray when we read […]
Would you like a recap of Jarvis Cocker’s best stage banter from Radio City Music Hall? Well then, here you are. …that’s “Guggenheim Fellow John Wray” to you. (Also, congratulations to Lydia Millet, Gayle Wald, and Donald Ray Pollock, among many others.) More details have emerged on Wastelanders, the upcoming collaboration between Joss Whedon and Warren Ellis. Alan Sepinwall has some thoughts on Lena Dunham’s Girls. Looks like Colson Whitehead is a fan of The Fall. Hey, look! It’s an […]
First he interviews Zach Galifianakis, and now John Wray is getting up on stage with Ezra Koeing from Vampire Weekend? Seriously Wray, what’s next? Are you the newest member of The Rock Bottom Remainders?
Tomorrow at PowerHouse Arena
By Jason Diamond Last week on The Faster Times, I gave my thoughts on the musical highlights of 2009, and made mention of what I like to call “noise lit,” including writers that are drawn to noise and drone like Blake Butler, Dennis Cooper, and also John Wray’s publicchampioning of Sunn O))). I’ve long found it interesting that what might be considered ‘unlistenable’ by some is actually influencing some fine writing. So, I decided to bother John Wray.
Tobias Carroll’s picks Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem Midnight Picnic by Nick Antosca Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler AM/PM by Amelia Gray Lowboy by John Wray The Other City by Michal Ajvaz Asta in the Wings by Jan Elizabeth Watson Between Jan Elizabeth Watson’s novel of a brother and sister raised in isolation and Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor, this was a good year for novels evoking childhood. Both Watson and Whitehead deftly suggest their narrators’ adult destinies with a few […]