[contextly_auto_sidebar id="EiHxpVihevRrdyMUqFrfFwSxjluukyi5"] I'VE long been an admirer of the genre-mashing short story writer Kelly Link, who infuses the literary story with horror and fairy tales; she co-runs an eclectic small publisher near Northampton, Mass. as well. Today Link is in the New York Times Book Review with a By the Book interview in which she talks about her favorite authors … [Read more...]
Farewell to Poet Galway Kinnell
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="iP0IqRoF4qtIY96CXBii7z7AbtKTPJ16"] Twenty years ago, a few friends and I piled into an old car and drove up to the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival at a little CT town to see one of the titans of American poetry read. The night transformed me, and those friendships, in ways hard to put into words. Now Galway Kinnell has died, after a long and rich life. He and his … [Read more...]
Chamber Music For the People
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="yE1qQT5mZx5Qd5zgZ5bpUcatdi77vObm"] HOW can classical music survive in a changing world? How can the aging audience be renewed? One answer is coming from a Boston group called Groupmuse, which puts on free, informal chamber concerts at people's homes, then passes the hat for the musicians. So far, this hasn't generated a huge amount of income for the players, but … [Read more...]
Boston and "The Fading Smile"
BACK in the '90s, when I was at my most ravenous about learning about poetry, I read a number of very fine memoirs about poets. Eileen Simpson's Poets in Their Youth (with its unforgettable portrait of Delmore Schwartz) was one, Donald Hall's Their Ancient Glittering Eyes (Dylan Thomas!) is another. Both are classics, but my favorite may be Peter Davison's The Fading Smile, set in Boston/Cambridge … [Read more...]
Christianity and Tom Perrotta
ONE of my favorite-ever author meetings was a lunch interview with Tom Perrotta around the time of The Abstinence Teacher. (I was in New England and swung to the fringe of Boston to meet him.) The novel's film adaptation was already rolling despite the fact that the book hadn't come out yet -- credit the success of Little Children for that one.The Abstinence Teacher, like his new one, The … [Read more...]
The Twilight of the ’80s with Richard Rushfield
FOR years before I met him, I knew of Richard Rushfield as this dark legend -- a nihilist wit who ran an underground humor magazine, an online savant with a Nixonian five-o' clock-shadow who had come into the LA Times to destroy the print world from within. When I finally met Rushfield, at an art opening a few months back, I found him oddly innocent and charmingly bewildered, and I'm pleased to … [Read more...]
John Updike vs. Witches of Eastwick
FOR a not terribly good book, "the witches of eastwick" has had quite an afterlife. not only did it become a popular, if faintly cheesy, movie involving cher, and a briefly lived stage show, but it's now set to become a television series. no, not a miniseries -- but a show that could run for years and years.why? i'm still a bit confused about the whole thing. but HERE is my new piece on the book's … [Read more...]