hanging on a ledge

"Editorially I can't push the magazine to the left because Harris is a shrewd opportunistic bastard who won't permit it. However, if we load the magazine with Bolshevik writers of national reputation, we can have Harris hanging on a ledge before long."

~~ from Saul Bellow to James T. Farrell, 1937

inversely correlated

"I began to use this metric as another informal [literary] quality litmus test: how big an entourage [the novelist] turned up with was often inversely correlated with the [quality of her book]. [One author] always had a large team in tow. Not only that, we knew about her visits weeks ahead of time, because her security detail sent a team of bomb-sniffing dogs well ahead of each one."

~~ from Where the Money Is: Value Investing in the Digital Age by Adam Seessel

Lewis Lapham, R.I.P.

I will always associate Harper's Magazine with Lewis Lapham more than any other writer.

May Mr. Lapham rest in peace.

happy birthday

Happy birthday, Papa.

Twenty great, good, or at least not bad novels I've read that were published in the 21st century

(1) The Sellout by Paul Beatty

(2) Heaven by Mieko Kawakami 

(3) Convenience Store Woman by Sayata Murata
(4) Zone by Mathias Enard 

(5) Inside Story: A novel by Martin Amis 

(6) 2666 by Roberto Bolano
(7) Outline by Rachel Cusk
(8) Wake up, Sir! by Jonathan Ames
(9) Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah

(10) The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
(11) The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen
(12) Netherland by Joseph O'Neill 

(13) The Lay of the Land by Richard Ford 

(14) The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
(15) The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
(16) Open City by Teju Cole
(17) Home Land by Sam Lipsyte
(18) The Cry of the Sloth by Sam Savage
(19) Nanjing Requiem by Ha Jin
(20) The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu

All [Mike Schmidt] had to do

"All [Mike Schmidt] had to do," [Rabbit] explains to Benny, "to earn another half million was to stay on the roster until August fifteenth. And he began the season like a ball of fire, two home runs the first two games, coming off that rotator-cuff surgery. But, like Schmidt himself said, it got to the point where he'd tell his body to do something and it wouldn't do it. He knew what he had to do and couldn't do it, and he faced the fact and you got to give him credit. In this day and age, he put honor over money."

~~ from Rabbit at Rest by John Updike

arrives September 17

Michael Weingrad's Eugene Nadelman: A Tale of the 1980s in Verse is available for preorder now.

out of runway: a three-book review

"Hey man, we’re out of runway" by Christian Lorentzen offers a sharp take on three books about Biden administration. Related to my current read, Joshua Cohen's The Netanyahus, earlier in the week I'd stumbled upon a Lorentzen review of Cohen's Witz.

give them some darkened niche and parchment

~~ from The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen

 

The Pep Boys

"It took some time, and some considerable cajoling on my part, but thanks to a few generous donors from the greater Philadelphia area (owners of a prominent wig-making factory and three local Jewish men in the automotive industry collectively known as "The Pep Boys"), I was able to offer Ben a one-year fellowship which he accepted."

~~ from The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen