I’m not sure if Americans being reluctant to get out and see more of the country and world is strictly a post 9/11 thing, like we’re not safe here, but we’re way less safe anywhere else, or if it’s always been this way. All I know is that I don’t see that many great books about stepping out of your comfort zone and into the back of a car or hiking for miles. There are glimmering examples, memoirs that have […]
Morning Bites: Elena Ferrante, John Hughes’s World, Emily Carroll Interviewed, Dolan Morgan, and More
Debating Elena Ferrante, new writing from Jason Diamond on John Hughes, interviews with Roxane Gay and Dolan Morgan, new fiction from Lauren Oyler and Eric Raymond, and more.
Roads to Somewhere: Gideon Lewis-Kraus’ “A Sense of Direction” Reviewed
A Sense of Direction by Gideon Lewis-Kraus Riverhead, 352 p. What makes Gideon Lewis-Kraus walk? That’s the central question of the young writer’s memoir, A Sense of Direction. You find yourself asking why the perpetually uprooted Lewis-Kraus finds himself globe trotting; what he’s looking for, and if he’s ever going to find it. Kraus is the type of soul that Henry David Thoreau would have enjoyed, a guy who is a savant in what the 19th century transcendentalist poet and […]
Weekend Bites: Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Martin Amis, Willy Loman to Mitt Romney, and More
“People talk about pilgrimages to Graceland or Cooperstown, or to see Saturn Devouring His Children at the Prado, or just to Flushing to get good soup dumplings, so one of the challenges I faced was how to limit the discussion.” Gideon Lewis-Kraus (above) talks to World Hum about A Sense of Direction. “If Martin Amis hasn’t exactly mellowed with age a certain degree of tenderness has nevertheless entered his more recent work.” – Morten Høi Jensen on Martin Amis at Los Angeles Review […]