Dag Solstad, a Norwegian novelist who teased form and style to create a world of alienation and disenchantment, enthralling and sometimes baffling his compatriots, died on March 14 in Oslo. He was 83. His death, in a hospital after a heart attack, was announced on Facebook by his publisher, Forlaget Oktober. Prime Minister Jonas Gahr … Read more
The I.M.L.S., while little known to the public, has a larger budget than both the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities. It was created in 1996, and has been reauthorized several times, most recently in 2018, in bipartisan legislation signed by Mr. Trump. The agency, which has roughly 70 employees, … Read more
Do You Know the Classic Works That Inspired These Popular Family Movies?
CLASS MATTERS: The Fight to Get Beyond Race Preferences, Reduce Inequality, and Build Real Diversity at America’s Colleges, by Richard D. Kahlenberg If there is one lesson that centrist Democrats have taken from Donald Trump’s startlingly broad-based victory in November, it is that their party will never return to majority status unless it regains the … Read more
Some people use noir to mean a spare writing style; others, a type of plot that tends toward deceit and despair. But it’s maybe best described as a place where no one wants to end up, literally or metaphorically. It’s probably my favorite genre. I first got into noir through my father’s Black Lizard Press … Read more
THE COLONY, by Annika Norlin; translated by Alice E. Olsson Imagine you are an adult orphan, a rootless Hungarian man raised in Sweden, whose greatest emotional connection is with a charismatic criminal. Let’s say she drags you to a remote settlement in the Swedish forest at the invitation of a woman she met in prison, … Read more
TILT, by Emma Pattee The most read New Yorker article of 2015 was Kathryn Schulz’s “The Really Big One,” about the potentially devastating Cascadia earthquake that has a 1-in-3 chance of striking the Pacific Northwest within the next 40 years. Taking this very real threat as its knockout premise, Emma Pattee’s debut novel, “Tilt,” is … Read more
TWIST, by Colum McCann It’s a literary conundrum of sorts, how on the surface Colum McCann’s novel “Twist” feels narratively disheveled, with subplots warmed up and abandoned, and loose threads dangling as they do everywhere in life. But the parts are not the sum. McCann, author of six previous novels, including the National Book Award-winning … Read more
THE SOCIAL GENOME: The New Science of Nature and Nurture, by Dalton Conley THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE HUMAN EMPIRE: Why Our Species Is on the Edge of Extinction, by Henry Gee In 2012, NPR reported the startling news that a fancy preschool on Manhattan’s Upper West Side would require its little applicants to … Read more
For much of her life, Catherine Raven felt worthless. Then she befriended a fox. After growing up in an abusive home where she felt unwanted, Raven moved out at 15, and never quite felt comfortable around other people. In 2003, she was living in a cottage in a remote valley in Montana, working as a … Read more