According to the weather apps, the world outside of our window feels like 108 degrees with a severe thunderstorm warning also on the horizon. If ever there was a time to find somewhere air-conditioned and crack open a book, we’re pretty sure this is it. Our recommended books for the month of July include a couple of names that will be familiar to longtime Vol. 1 Brooklyn readers, along with some intriguing forays into subjects ranging from Kafka to tradwives.
In our morning reading: new writing by Terese Svoboda and Rachel Kushner, an excerpt from Niko Stratis’s memoir, and more.
In our afternoon reading: Billy Woods talks lyrics, Brooklyn gets a video store, and more.
The very first dirty word I ever heard out of Edmund White’s mouth wasn’t what I expected. I was expecting the OG of Gay Literature to blurt out cocksucking, finger fucking, felching, something like the no-holds-barred vocabulary of his books. But no. The first dirty word Edmund White uttered when I met him was “pussy”. We were sitting in choice orchestra seats at a production of Uncle Vanya at New York’s City Center when the curtain rose and leading lady, Cate Blanchett, appeared. She was this close to us. Ed leaned over and twittered, “I can see her pussy” which we actually could through her diaphanous underpants. We both howled like school girls, and I could tell Blanchett heard us and sent a scathing look our way. That made me like Ed immediately. That was also the time he told me the story of “awful Lillian Hellman” who, whenever she went to the theater and had to leave her seat, would deliberately step hard on the feet of the people in her row. “A meaner woman you never met.” Ed loved telling this story and repeated it many times at his apartment cocktail gatherings.
In our morning reading: interviews with Lyra Pramuk and Thomas Kendall, a reading from Jayson Greene, and more.
In our afternoon reading: an interview with Maris Kreizman, thoughts on books by Clive Barker and Jason Brown, and more.
Author Jen Michalski is intrigued by the spaces where empathy and imperfection coexist. Her latest novel All This Can Be True is a stunning result of this fascination – an emotionally resonant sapphic drama that delves into love, betrayal, and the contradictions – the secrets – with which we all live.
There’s a particular challenge that comes from writing a book in the world of another artistic discipline. Why? The usual challenges that apply to writing fiction apply, but so does the task of accurately depicting a very different creative word. In the case of Martha Anne Toll‘s new novel Duet for One, that world is classical music. Set in the wake of the death of an acclaimed pianist, Toll’s novel explores how her loved ones grieve and reflect on their own artistic triumphs and frustrations. I talked with Toll to learn more about book’s origin and the difficulties she faced while writing it.