Category: literary life
The Portland Tribune profiles local author Cheryl Strayed, whose debut novel Torch is published this month.
[H]ere the 37-year-old author touches on why she finds it hard to discuss her book. Because of the subject matter, Strayed finds that people expect the book to be “a Hallmark type of story.”
“Yes, it’s a book about a woman who dies and leaves a family, but there’s a fullness to it and it’s filled with light,” she says. “And I feel like I have to convince people of that.”
Any reader who takes the time to savor “Torch” will understand what she’s talking about. There’s humor amid the anguish of Strayed’s characters along with remarkable insights on dealing with the death of a loved one. Strayed doesn’t drown us in pathos. Instead, she exposes the roller coaster of emotions that toss the survivors in different directions and ambush them when they least expect it.
You can read it all here.
Geoffrey Knoop, the partner of the writer formerly known as JT Leroy, speaks to the NY Times about his role in the scam:
Mr. Knoop said that he played an important role in the creation of JT Leroy, who developed a cult literary following. “On the business side, I ran a lot of the day to day,” Mr. Knoop said. “Sending things out and contacting people, making decisions about what we were and weren’t going to do.”
Mr. Knoop, whose 25-year-old half sister Savannah Knoop was unmasked by The New York Times last month as the public face of JT Leroy, said that he had come forward out of concern for his son, family members and others affected by what he called an all-consuming web of deceit. He said he and Ms. Albert separated in December, in large part because of stress caused by the deception. He said they are involved in a custody dispute over their young son. “If you’re feeling more and more suffocated by the complications and lies, it’s not worth it,” he said.
But of course he’s not speaking out because of the lies, he’s speaking out because he’s hired an entertainment lawyer and is hoping to sell a movie about his experience.
Deborah Eisenberg’s new story collection, Twilight of the Superheroes, gets a rave review in today’s Christian Science Monitor. The title story is about four young people who sublet an apartment in New York with a clear view of the World Trade Center, before the attacks.
“When they moved in, it probably was the best view on the planet. Then, one morning, out of the clear blue sky, it became, for a while, probably the worst.”
The story is told in fragments from the points of view of Nathaniel, who is working on a comic book called Passivityman, and his Uncle Lucien, who got Nathaniel and his friends the apartment.
“The good-hearted, casually wasteful festival was over…. For a long miserable while, in fact, the city looked like a school play about war profiteering,” Lucien thinks about New York in the months following the tragedy.
Then he decides that, no, it’s more as if everyone’s acting as if they’re in a badly written propaganda film.
The collection also includes the story “Some Other, Better Otto” which was also anthologized in Best American Short Stories 2004, edited by Lorrie Moore.
Kevin Baker’s new novel Strivers Row follows a fictional Jonah Dove, a minister at one of the city’s greatest churches, who meets the very real Malcolm Little, later to become Malcolm X. He talks about the book on NPR.
Whaaaat? You’re telling me John Banville’s The Sea isn’t entirely fiction?
This week, the LBC is having an interview, a podcast, and other assorted discussions about Edward Falco’s Sabbath Night in the Church of the Piranha. In related news, the Denver Post has an article about the Lit Blog Co-op and its goals.