A little "A Little Life" quote

A tip of the hat to Lee Levine for spotting this quote in the April 2 edition of "The Aesthete" profile in the Financial Times. Paul Andrews, the creative director of Salvatore Ferragamo, was asked what he's currently reading:

"The book on my bedside table is A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. It was recommended to me by two avid reader friends, Tommy Dorfman and Jacob Bixenman. With its length and heavy subject matter, it's not an easy read, but it's such a powerful book. It engages with queer aesthetic modes, emotional truth, self-indulgence, addiction and, ultimately, death. You can't imagine there is going to be another turn and suddenly you're bawling your eyes out again."

(We discussed the novel on Feb. 7, 2018.)

Mark Doty on Walt Whitman

Today, W.W. Norton released poet Mark Doty's latest book—What Is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life. My thanks to Octavio Roca for passing along this excerpt, which Literary Hub has published. Here's one tidbit:

If [Whitman] sometimes changed his pronouns, or shifted the order of poems in order to blur the nature of a particular allegiance, and if he betrayed his own sexuality when confronted head-on, it would nonetheless be absurd to expect him to have been any more radical than he actually managed to be.

Support your local bookstores!

When the Capital Fringe Festival notified supporters that it was, reluctantly, canceling this summer's festival, the message included a very useful set of links to local bookstores. Though their physical doors are closed, they are all open online for business. You might also consider purchasing gift cards from them, which not only boosts their income but constitutes a vote of confidence in their futures.

Capitol Hill Books | Loyalty Books | Potter’s House | Politics & Prose | Busboys & Poets | Lost City Books | Charm City Books  |

Kramers Books | MahoganyBooks 

Who Killed Whose Father!?

We've read Édouard Louis' The End of Eddy. I've read and expect we'll eventually discuss his second "autofiction" A History of Violence. Both of these and the life that lies behind them (and it's not merely completist to exclude no sense of "lie"!) are interestingly discussed in Elizabeth Zerofsky's feature article in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

I haven't read his third "work" Who Killed My Father  and though it's mentioned in the article—even featured in this photo

A scene from the stage adaptation of Louis’s novel ‘‘Who Killed My Father.”

—it's barely mentioned. Or maybe not. Much of the second half deals with his political actions ("Louis sees literature to a large extant as a political project"), his alliance with the Eribon-Lagasnerie "factory", and the rise of the gilets-jaunes. All of this very interesting to be sure, and complicated in the typically French way, but hanging out or over like some burst appendix.

Bookmen DC will not meet in May...:-(

As I've already notified current members via e-mail, the extension of "stay at home" procedures means our group will not be able to meet until June, at the earliest.  Once we have a firm date for the reopening of libraries and other D.C. government facilities, I'll revise our discussion schedule.  In the meantime, keep calm and keep reading!