Latest news with #ScottHeller
New York Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Esi Edugyan Has a Long List of Canadian Writers to Recommend
In an email interview, the Vancouver Island-based novelist described why being a Booker Prize judge turned out to be surprisingly 'exhilarating.' SCOTT HELLER What's the last great book you read? 'Change,' by Édouard Louis. He writes about how the abandonment of modest roots for a more privileged life can enact a kind of violence on intimate relationships. I read everything he writes. What's your go-to classic? I was 18 when I started reading 'Anna Karenina,' and I continue to read it every few years. I remember how grown up and worldly the characters once seemed. Now they are all so young! Your favorite book no one else knows? 'The Cave,' by the Dutch author Tim Krabbé, is an elegant puzzle of a novel. Do books serve a moral function? How so? They can, but they shouldn't set out to. When readers open themselves up to the intensity of another's experience — even that of an invented person — it can be transformative. Books can leave you feeling less singular, strange and alone, but they can also expose you to a way of being that is completely alien to you, against which to measure your own choices. Novels that are written with a pointed moral or a message are not novels. They are propaganda. Do you consider yourself a writer of historical fiction? Every time I describe myself as a writer of historical fiction, I feel an inward cringe as I sense those unfamiliar with my work picturing scenes of ripped-off bodices and men riding horses across twilit downs. Inevitably when I'm asked again, my reply is always the same. Something in that description must feel true. But I chafe against it. When 'Washington Black' came out, you told The Times that it would be 'daunting' to write a novel set in the present. Are you getting closer to trying? The temptation is still to look to parallels in the past for what's going on now. The past has contours the present simply doesn't possess for me; its throughlines feel more easily grasped and wrestled into a kind of shape. But I think it's probably an important skill to be able to confront the moment as it now appears, somehow. What surprised you most about chairing the Booker Prize panel in 2023? What a healthy state literature is in. You can only hear that the novel is dying so many times before you start to feel cynical about the whole enterprise. Paring down the list became excruciating — our jury had many rigorous conversations from which we all mercifully emerged with our limbs still intact. It was a fascinating, combative, respectful, exhilarating experience. What surprised you most about seeing 'Washington Black' adapted for television? I was struck by how much more externalized the storytelling has to be. This would seem an obvious fact, but it can still surprise you. Because characters' inner worlds can't be accessed as readily, everything must be recreated as surface, as something that can be gleaned visually. And so the set design is ferociously intricate, and multitudes are expressed in a glance or a grimace or the way a masterful actor carries her body. In a novel, the writing is everything. In a series or a film, it is one thread of a larger netting. Tell me about western Canadian writers the wider world should know more about. Patrick Lane was one of our greatest poets — his work is in many ways evocative of Cormac McCarthy. Also wonderful are the short stories of Tamas Dobozy and the novels of Patrick deWitt; Michael Christie's era-spanning 'Greenwood'; Jasmine Sealy's epic 'The Island of Forgetting'; Steven Price's elegant 'Lampedusa'; the beautiful poetry of Lorna Crozier and Jan Zwicky. For canonical works, I'd suggest Sheila Watson's high modernist novel 'The Double Hook,' Jack Hodgins' Vancouver Island stories 'Spit Delaney's Island,' and Joy Kogawa's 'Obasan,' about the internment of Japanese Canadians during World War II. How do you organize your books? I recently moved house, so my entire book collection is unfortunately boxed in my garage! When I get the shelving up, I'll again arrange things alphabetically, and also by genre. It's the only way to find anything when you've got over 10,000 books. What's the last book you read that made you laugh? Kevin Wilson's 'The Family Fang' is an utter delight. Katherine Heiny's 'Single, Carefree, Mellow' was also a singular pleasure. What books are on your night stand? Ben Lerner's exquisite '10:04,' which I've somehow only just come to; James Fox's 'The World According to Color: A Cultural History'; Percival Everett's 'James'; Alan Hollinghurst's 'Our Evenings'; Katie Kitamura's 'Audition'; and Donatella Di Pietrantonio's 'The Brittle Age.' What books are you embarrassed not to have read yet? I've never been able to finish 'Moby-Dick,' an admission made all the more dreadful for the fact that it is my partner's favorite novel. You're organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite? Leo Tolstoy, Toni Morrison and Elena Ferrante — though I fear Tolstoy might spend the evening lecturing us on the world's ills.
New York Times
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Stephen Fry Knows He's Become a Middle-Aged Cliché
By email, the actor and prolific writer (three memoirs!) apologized, sort of, for outgrowing D.H. Lawrence. SCOTT HELLER Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine? Jo, the crossing sweeper in 'Bleak House,' is the character who has the most powerful effect on me whenever I return to that peerless book. (Incidentally, Miriam Margolyes's reading of the audiobook is one of the wonders of the age.) Jo is a minor character really, not a hero, but he literally sweeps across the different worlds of the novel. And Dickens's authorial voice denouncing the society that let him die is a masterpiece of fury and despair. Your favorite antihero or villain? Tom Buchanan in 'The Great Gatsby' stands out. There are so many Tom Buchanans in the world now. Running it. Or — to change a letter — ruining it. In 2021, the Times described you as an 'avuncular public intellectual.' How do you feel about that label? Oh my lordy lord. Avuncular gives me great pleasure. But I disavow 'intellectual,' just as I disavow 'artist' (not that quite so many call me that). I am, I think, an entertainer, impure and simple. But I love the company of real intellectuals. When were you first exposed to Greek mythology? At prep school, which in Britain means aged 7 to 13. I instantly fell in love with the juice, energy and fierce delight of them. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Wally Lamb's Guilty Pleasure Is a History of Mad Magazine
In an email interview, the author of 'She's Come Undone' was proud to say he still follows Oprah's book picks. SCOTT HELLER Describe your ideal reading experience. It's early September. I'm on Cape Cod at Truro's Long Nook Beach. There's a warm breeze, the crowds have left and so have the horseflies. What's the best book you've ever gotten as a gift? My former publisher, Judith Regan, once gave me a copy of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' signed by Harper Lee. Do you count any books as guilty pleasures? In my early teens I got hold of William S. Burroughs's 'Naked Lunch' and hid it behind other books in my bookshelf. Sadly, my mother found it and made it disappear. Much more recently, I enjoyed 'The MAD Files: Writers and Cartoonists on the Magazine That Warped America's Brain!' What books are on your night stand? Kaveh Akbar's 'Martyr!,' Beth Macy's 'Paper Girl,' Emma Pattee's 'Tilt,' Kira Jane Buxton's 'Tartufo,' David Litt's 'It's Only Drowning,' Nick Drnaso's 'Sabrina' and 'Pushcart Prize XLIX: Best of the Small Presses 2025,' edited by Bill Henderson. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
15 Surprising Show-Tune Covers for Broadway's Big Night
By Scott Heller Dear listeners, This is Scott Heller, the former theater editor (now I'm on The New York Times Book Review). With the Tony Awards this Sunday, I'm serving up show tunes to Amplifier readers — but not the usual fare. There are no deathless standards here, like Judy Collins singing 'Send in the Clowns' or anything from Barbra Streisand's 'Broadway Album.' And if you're the kind of person who saves your Playbills, you've already listened to the Pet Shop Boys version of 'Losing My Mind' — a lot. Rather, I'm hoping this edition of The Amplifier is full of surprising covers, and covers of show tunes you may not know as theater songs in the first place. I've mostly stayed away from pop albums designed to market the shows themselves, though I couldn't resist opening with one, from well before 'Hamilton' got into that game. And, alas, one of my favorites — Jill Sobule's 'Sunrise, Sunset,' recorded for the 'Fiddler' tribute compilation 'Knitting on the Roof' — doesn't seem to be streamable. But you can find it on her website. Laden with happiness and tears, Scott Who knew? This delightful curiosity comes from a 1968 Motown album on which the trio performed 11 songs from 'Funny Girl,' a tie-in released just as the movie version reached theaters. Take away the ugly duckling story line and the Brooklynese and it doesn't exactly add up. But who cares when greeted with brash horns, sunny vocals and a group cheer after the unforgettable rhyme, 'When a girl's incidentals / are no bigger than two lentils.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
