“Eye-opening stories illustrate the outrageous lengths to which town leaders and affluent residents will go to prohibit housing that might attract the ‘wrong’ sort of people. A report on Lisa Prevost’s Snob Zones: Fear, Prejudice, and Real Estate. Here.
“While delivering one laugh-out-loud zinger after another (many of them too raunchy to be quoted here), [Sam] Byers lampoons, with excoriating wit, the hash we have made of modern life, and the hash it has made of us.” A review of Sam Byers’ debut novel Idiopathy. Here.
“I think everyone can relate to the werewolf myth—because we’ve all, as a result of alcohol, drugs, exhaustion, rage, gone off the leash and come to regret it later. I appeal to this psychologically—the unleashed id—but with a biological cause; I’m hopefully making possible supernatural circumstances.” Q&A with novelist Benjamin Percy (Red Moon). Here.
“The Proclamation was revolutionary in both its political and its social consequences—that is, it made a radical and permanent change in the character of American government and society.” Q&A with historian Richard Slotkin (The Long Road to Antietam: How the Civil War Became a Revolution). Here.
“[Lionel] Shriver is looking at obesity close-up and personal — and she doesn’t like it.” A review of Shriver’s new novel Big Brother. Here. Plus an interview with the author. Here.
“Enroute from the coast—Here for a few days on business—How are you and the family old sport?” Fitzgerald’s sources for The Great Gatsby. Here.
“So much of the blues is about pain. Emotional but also physical—the strain of hard labor, of physical exhaustion.” Q&A with Bill Cheng (Southern Cross the Dog). Here.
“I am a fan of his novels but I have never seen him in person nor heard his voice. Is he a normal person?” A report on novelist Haruki Murakami’s first public appearance in Japan in nearly two decades. Here.
