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I was surprised to learn Lapham’s Quarterly is only five years old, given it feels firmly at the center of the literary firmament. This is of course due to Lewis Lapham’s impeccable taste and, as you’ll notice, his inimitable style. Photographer Joshua Simpson and I stopped by their offices to get a look inside the journal’s operations. Thanks to Michelle Legro for her help in setting this up. (more…)
Paul Murray is the author, most recently, of Skippy Dies, due in paperback later this month. He spoke by telephone with his editor, Faber and Faber publisher Mitzi Angel, about his next novel, reading Proust, and what stops boys from putting dental floss up their noses.
Mitzi Angel: So I heard the big news about David Cameron’s holiday reading.
Paul Murray: Yes, my agent texted me at seven in the morning last week to say she’d heard David Cameron had brought Skippy Dies on holiday. The Daily Mail had the headline CAMERON BRINGS DARK TALE OF DRUGS AND PORN ON HOLIDAY, which was cool.
Angel: A Dark Tale of Drugs and Porn! Maybe that’s how we should have described the book in our catalog! Was Skippy the only book he took on holiday with him?
Murray: He took Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore, which sounded to me like your classic aspirational holiday read that never makes it out of the suitcase. But I don’t know how much of Skippy he read, either, because a day or two later the protests and looting broke out and he had to cut short his holiday. Though I liked to imagine him sneakily reading it under the table at COBRA meetings.
The last Nerd Jeopardy went so well, we decided to bring it back for the annual Lit Crawl. It’s essentially a bar crawl with literary events added on top. As such, there will be a few key changes.
Firstly, this will be a condensed and very quick version of “Jeopardy!”, with only one round before Final Jeopardy. Second, we expect a slightly more tipsy crowd than usual, so heckling will be encouraged. Third, it will be in a bar.
If you haven’t been to our literary trivia night, the format is pretty simple. Imagine regular “Jeopardy!”, but excise the questions about psychics and European history. Add a few categories about books and pop culture, and let teams of three compete over glory, respect, and assorted prizes.
Update: contestants will be up against a formidable team of FSG authors: Will Hermes, Paul LaFarge, and Alina Simone. Combined they’re like Ken Jennings, if Ken Jennings graduated from an MFA program and went to rock shows.
Saturday, September 10th, 2011
310 Lounge
310 Bowery (between 1st and 2nd st.), NYC
Every month we’ll roundup highlights from our Longreads page, where we’ll be posting articles, interviews, and stories longer than 2,000 words. (Also keep an eye out for our Twitter posts marked with the #longreads tag.) From the past thirty days: