Saturday in the LA Times
In Saturday’s LA Times, I reviewed Benjamin Black’s A Death in Summer. My byline also appeared with a print version of this interview with author Patrick deWitt — whose novel The Sisters Brothers is...
View ArticlePresent!
I don’t think I can come up with all the work I’ve done since February. Recently, I’ve reviewed for the LA Times: The Kid by Sapphire, Bright’s Passage by Josh Ritter, The Beginners by Rebecca Wolff,...
View ArticleAgain, Steve Martin talks about art and it doesn’t suck
On Thursday I went to LACMA to see Steve Martin talk about art. Dave Hickey, his interlocutor, had a hard time keeping up — but who can share a stage with Steve Martin? I wrote about it for Jacket...
View ArticleOn Damon Galgut’s In a Strange Room
In today’s LA Times, I review Damon Galgut’s In a Strange Room, beginning: The traveler at the center of Damon Galgut’s new novel “In a Strange Room,” a finalist for this year’s Man Booker Prize, is...
View Articleprizes prizes prizes
Yesterday I wrote about the National Book Award finalists for the LA Times. The day before that, I wrote about the Man Booker Prize for the LA Times. Now, I’m out of coffee. Why do these things start...
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On The Lovers
The Bosphorus in Turkey at sunset My review of Vendela Vida’s new novel The Lovers is in today’s LA Times. It’s set in Turkey, and follows Yvonne, a 53 year-old widow. While it’s a sleek read, I didn’t...
View ArticleBlue penises, brutality and boring sentences
If I had a feeling of deja-vu when I read other pieces about Bret Easton Ellis, who seemed to go through exactly the same routine with each interviewer, people (on MeFi, in the comments here) scoffed....
View ArticleChanges at the LA Times
For the last five years, David Ulin has been books editor of the LA Times, but that’s going to change. Today he announced that he’ll become the paper’s new full-time book critic, moving into that role...
View ArticleThe Bret Easton Ellis Meets the Press routine
In late May, I went to Bret Easton Ellis’ apartment to talk to him for a feature for the Los Angeles Times (it’s in Sunday’s paper). I’d arranged to be there late on a Friday afternoon, hoping he’d be...
View ArticleNothing happened: a review
Jake Silverstein, the editor of the award-winning Texas Monthly and a contributing editor at Harper’s, has published his first book, Nothing Happened and Then It Did. Opening with his early days as a...
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