George Saunders & Katie Kitamura: One Thing In Common

What do George Saunders and Katie Kitamura have in common apart from having just published highly regarded novels?  It turns out they both like a book called "The Argonauts" by Maggie Nelson which revolves around .... well, anal sex.

Saunders, whose debut novel "Lincoln in the Bardo" currently qualifies as Book-of-the-Moment, was asked in a recent "New York Times" interview "what's the last great book you have read?"

Another Answer to the Reader of "Manhattan Morning"

In a recent post on Italian novelist Elena Ferrante, I mentioned American artist Marilyn Minter and now I am going to quote her again.

"Fashion is one of the engines of culture. You see who your tribe is by the way they present themselves -- and even if you're someone who doesn't care what you look like or don't put yourself together, that's a tribe!"

So she said in a recent New York Times interview.

I mention that because a reader of my novella, "Manhattan Morning," expressed surprise over what she said was a focus in my book on women's clothing styles.

An Answer to a Reader of "Manhattan Morning"

In my last post about comments from readers of "Manhattan Morning," someone asked several questions that I didn't then answer. 

Here's the answer to one of them: "where did the story come from and how much of it is autobiographical?"

Elena Ferrante Seen as a Writer of "Competition"

I was scanning through the New York Times  Sunday Magazine today and came across an interview with Marilyn Minter, an artist who once painted women's public hair for "Playboy Magazine," only to have the magazine ultimately decide not to print the images.

Now they are hanging on a wall at the Brooklyn Museum as one part of a major retrospective of Minter's work entitled "Pretty/Dirty."

Ghost Stories and the Line Between the Living and the Dead

I was reading the New York Times Sunday magazine the other day and came across an interesting little item entitled "How to Tell A Ghost Story." If you've never written one, but would like to try your hand at it, the brief article is  definitely worth a read.

The tips contained in the article are attributed to Ruth Robbins, professor of Victorian Literature at Leeds Beckett University in England, and she makes several interesting points, among them that people tend to be possessed by their possessions.  That's a notion that authors of many genres of fiction might want to keep in mind.

The Role of the Dead in the Lives of the Living

The other night, I attended a performance of "Cinderella" by the Pacific Northwest Ballet.  This was not a conventional "Cinderella," such as that choreographed by Fredrick Ashton and performed by the American Ballet Theater, but rather a reinterpretation of the story by Jean-Christophe Maillot, of Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo.

The main difference: Cinderella's father is obsessed with his deceased former wife (Cinderella's mother), and dance connected with that relationship both opens and closes Maillot's ballet, leaving viewers as thinking as much about that as about Cinderella's successful conquest of the famous prince, which is of course pre-ordained and thus perhaps not as interesting.

Marriage as a Ménages à Trois

"Goodreads" just send out by email a February newsletter in which several authors suggest books to read within certain categories.

Katie Kitamura, author of the recent novel "A Separation," listed five of her favorite books on the topic of marriage.