Author Archives: Joseph Barbato

“This brush, this week only, is on sale.” Q&A with the delightful Elinor Lipman (The View from Penthouse B). Here.

“Electrifying tales of vibrant urban nights and acrid, desperate days.” A review of A. Igoni Barrett’s Love Is Power, or Something Like That: Stories. Here.

“I belong here [in Maryland], where everything is civilized and gay and rotted and polite,” he wrote.  And there, on on the grounds of St. Mary’s Catholic Church, in Rockville, you’ll find F. Scott Fitzgerald. Here.

Shadow wars! “The ominous blurring of traditional roles between soldiers and spies, the lush growth of a military-intelligence complex, and what the shift portends for the future.” A review of Mark Mazzetti’s The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth. Here.

“At his best, [Richard]  Brautigan was ‘a connoisseur of the perfect moment’, with a talent for ‘coaxing something amusing from the mundane’”. A review of William Hjortsberg’ massive biography of the author of Trout Fishing in America and other novels, Jubilee Hitchhiker: The Life and Times of Richard Brautigan, now out in paper. Here.

“I feel most free when doing stand-up comedy for friends.” Q&A with A.M. Homes (May We Be Forgiven). Here.

That PW interview with novelist Claire (“What kind of question is that?”) Messud. Here.

Rationing? Q&A with Stan Cox (Any Way You Slice It: The Past, Present, and Future of Rationing). Here.

Read JR! A splendid glimpse into the life of one of our finest authors: A review of Letters of William Gaddis edited by Steven Moore. Here.

Michiko says: “The reader can never quite shrug off the sense that the novel is a sort of laboratory experiment that hasn’t entirely gelled, an experiment in which an author who writes with Jamesian attention to emotional nuance has tried to inject a tabloidy story line with literary import.” A review of Claire Messud’s latest novel The Woman Upstairs. Here. Plus a Q&A with the author. Here.

Attention Gillian Flynn freaks! Here.

“It’s been big. A lot of stuff. Interviews and coverage. It’s enough to make you envious and me tired.” A report on James Salter and All That Is. Here.

“People only say I’m angry because I’m black and I’m a woman.  But all sorts of people write with strong feeling, the way I do.” Q&A with novelist Jamaica Kincaid (See Now Then). Here.