I don’t recall the last time I was so eager to talk about a novel to people — like it was breaking news. (which may or may not be a compliment, but there it is.)

Review tk in Air Mail

Reading about Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury and thinking how I need to get back to that Leonard Woolf memoir about working in Ceylon. Also thinking about John Seabrook’s record guy and his emphasis on scenes.

“The more we know of people the less we can sum them up. Just as we think we hold the bird in our hands, the bird flits off.”
An essay by Virginia Woolf on 'Mrs. Thrale' (From The Moment, February, 1941)

Out now at long last: PASSAGE, n+1’s outstanding new issue. Subscribers can read it this instant. Non-subscribers: change your ways! Enter PASSAGE at checkout and get 20% off. I need you to read this magazine—and we need your money. nplusonemag.com/subscribe/

Thank you Mark, this is a lung-collapsingly good review! Lisa Borst writes better than I do and is funny and she understands things about me that have puzzled me for a long time.

A sublime book...

Available on Peacock, Apple TV, Prime Video: tv.apple.com/us/movie/the-r…

My privilege to have interviewed the director of “The Restless Conscience”

movingpictureshow.com/?p=3960

On the Anniversary of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s execution, The Restless Conscience, the Oscar nominated film about the German resistance and Bonhoeffer: petrafoundation.org/fellows/hava-b…

'The aesthetic outlook *is* a moral outlook, one that stresses the values of openness, detachment, hedonism, curiosity, tolerance , the cultivation of the self, and the preservation of a private sphere--in short, the values of liberal individualism.'

It’s happening! Please join me this summer. There are still spots open. A week by the ocean, a supportive workshop, and amazing lectures and readings at the Southampton Writers Conference, July 10-14 2024. Deadline Monday, April 15th….

We’re posting a few new Bookforum Magazine pieces online today. The samizdat is cool though . . .

So glad to publish this excerpt from Gillian Linden's outstanding Negative Space, out next week from W. W. Norton & Company. A sly, funny, hyper-observant novel about teaching , parenting, and navigating hard choices at every scale. A truly great book. nplusonemag.com/online-only/on…

Love to see my old boss, Lewis Lapham, getting called out for his personal style in the year of our lord 2024.

My first New Orleans apartment was one thin French- Quarter wall away from a dancer who was rehearsing a routine to Ain't Got No Home and played it at least thirty times a day. RIP nola.com/entertainment_…

Hofmann on Florida, 'where education goes to die'. lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/apri…

Just saw the short film Toxic Femininity featuring John Epperson and directed by Chloë Sevigny. Weird and wonderful! An incredible performance! Part of the Off Stage program at
TNG

In a time of endless poppycock and tireless gaslighting, hot takes and deep fakes, at least this can be said of an earthquake: It is undeniably real.

Alina Stefanescu knows how to pick an epigraph! 🔥 This one appears in her glorious, 2021 collection, “Dor,” which I got via Blue Cypress Books in New Orleans.

“Might the pillars of cloud and fire that parted the Red Sea have been the handiwork of extraterrestrial pranksters? Who lit the bush on Mount Horeb?”