Category Archives: Literature

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – Sept 19, 2022

A portrait of Queen Elizabeth II against the Union Jack.

Malika Favre’s “Figurehead”

Queen Elizabeth II’s seven-decade reign has come to an end.

By Françoise Mouly, Art by Malika Favre

Queen Elizabeth II died on Thursday, at the age of ninety-six. During her seventy-year-long reign, the Queen presided over the dissolution of the British Empire. She was there for the creation of the European Union—and for Brexit. She was there for Churchill, for Thatcher, and, just last Tuesday, she was there to shake hands with the incoming Conservative Prime Minister, Liz Truss. On the cover of the September 19th issue, the artist Malika Favre, who lived in London for sixteen years, captures the indelible association between Britain and its longtime monarch.

Previews: BOOKFORUM Magazine – Sep/Oct 2022

On the cover: Lynne Tillman, New York, October 1990. Bob Berg/Getty Images

Bookforum Magazine – SEP/OCT/NOV 2022

FEATURES

Jane’s World

MOIRA DONEGAN RECONSIDERS A PRE-ROE ABORTION SERVICE IN A POST-ROE ERA

Meditations in an Emergency

LUCY SANTE ON EMMANUEL CARRÈRE’S BOOK OF MEDITATION AND MENTAL BREAKDOWN

Liz Kid

CHARLIE TYSON ON DARRYL PINCKNEY’S COMING-OF-AGE MEMOIR THAT DOUBLES AS A TRIBUTE TO ELIZABETH HARDWICK

COLUMNS

SARAH JAFFE interviews Namwali Serpell

CRITICS AND NOVELISTS on what they’ve been reading

BOOKFORUM CONTRIBUTORS on this season’s notable art books

ERIN SOMERS on fangirls

Preview: The New Yorker Magazine – Sept 12, 2022

A crew films a very small dog in the middle of a bustling movie set.

George Balanchine’s Soviet Reckoning

New York City Ballet’s 1962 tour of the U.S.S.R. forced the great choreographer to confront the regime he’d fled and the people he’d left behind.

John Cuneo’s “Top Dog”

The artist discusses canine stars, his first trip abroad, and keeping a sense of the spontaneous in his work.

Books: The New York Times Book Review – Sept 4, 2022

The New York Times Book Review 04 September 2022

Stephen King’s ‘Fairy Tale’: A Portal to a Fantasy Kingdom

In King’s latest novel, a teenage boy discovers another world beneath a backyard shed.

Why Did Some Cubans Inject Themselves With H.I.V.?

“Sacrificio,” a novel by Ernesto Mestre-Reed, imagines an extreme counterrevolutionary movement during desperate times.

Newly Published, From Lost Worlds to Whale Talk

Cover: New York Review Of Books – Sept 22, 2022

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Outdoing Reality

The absurd incursions of the real into the intelligent life of the imagination are central to the Afghan American writer Jamil Jan Kochai’s fiction.

The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories by Jamil Jan Kochai

Xanadu’s Architect

Despite designing over seven hundred buildings, the pioneering female architect Julia Morgan is now best known for a single, extremely eccentric commission: San Simeon, the estate of the legendary newspaper proprietor William Randolph Hearst.

Julia Morgan: An Intimate Biography of the Trailblazing Architect by Victoria Kastner, with photography by Alexander Vertikoff

Julia Morgan: The Road to San Simeon: Visionary Architect of the California Renaissance by Gordon L. Fuglie, Jeffrey Tilman, Karen McNeill, Johanna Kahn, Elizabeth McMillian, Kirby William Brown, and Victoria Kastner

Previews: Times Literary Supplement – Sept 2, 2022

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This week’s @TheTLS, featuring Ben Hutchinson on the Jena Set; @misbehavingmonk on his father’s Alzheimer’s; John Lloyd on liberalism; @RohanMaitzen on Maggie O’Farrell; @TomCook24 on Bishop and Heaney; M. C. on Salman Rushdie – and more.

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – Sept 5, 2022

A woman in a red hat bikes along a rainy city street.

September 5, 2022 Issue

J. J. Sempé’s “Morning Music”

The French artist’s widow describes Sempé’s decades-long relationship with the magazine and his deep appreciation for its spirit, its staff, and its readers. By Françoise Mouly, Art by J. J. Sempé

Justice Alito’s Crusade Against a Secular America Isn’t Over

He’s had win after win—including overturning Roe v. Wade—yet seems more and more aggrieved. What drives his anger?

By Margaret Talbot

Preview: The New Yorker Magazine – August 29, 2022

Illustration of the “Mona Lisa” blocking a view of her face with her palm.

Anita Kunz’s “No Photos, Please!”

The artist discusses the enduring allure of the “Mona Lisa,” the puzzle of celebrity, and which famous people she would invite to dinner.

By Françoise Mouly, Art by Anita Kunz

The Age of Instagram Face

How social media, FaceTune, and plastic surgery created a single, cyborgian look.

By Jia Tolentino

What Bob Dylan Wanted at Twenty-three

A portrait of the artist trying to move past “finger-pointing” songs, and finding a new voice in the process.

By Nat Hentoff