Tonight, poets Dorothea Lasky and Timothy Donnelly read from their latest books, Animal and The Problem of Many, at Brooklyn’s Greenlight Bookstore.
Edwin Frank reflects on the superb NYRB Classics series, for which he is the editorial director, on its twentieth anniversary. “I’m extremely suspicious of the notion [of relevance],” Frank says. “It seems to me simply to feed people back to themselves. The best art is often powerfully irrelevant. I prefer the idea of currency, which is not quite the same as relevance. A book that has currency puts our present concerns in a different but distinct perspective.”
At New York magazine, Reeves Wiedman has written an in-depth piece about Condé Nast—or “what’s left of it.” “Many of Wintour’s current and former colleagues consider her indispensable, someone whose eventual departure—she turns 70 next month—will spell the company’s doom,” Wiedman writes. “Others have watched Condé’s decline since she took over as artistic director and wonder how she’s still in charge.”
Book deals: Christine Smallwood—who has written for Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine, and Bookforum, among other publications—has sold her debut novel, Life of the Mind, to Hogarth. . . . Simon & Schuster has bought Val Kilmer’s memoir, I’m Your Huckleberry (a line from the film Tombstone). Sean Manning of S&S says that Kilmer is “a gifted storyteller” who is “astoundingly well-read.” The book is scheduled to be published in April 2020, to coincide with the release of Top Gun: Maverick.
In his new book, Triggered, Donald Trump Jr. mocks Robert S. Mueller and attacks some of the president’s most vocal critics. He reveals that even the president has at times found his social-media outbursts too aggressive. “My father . . . told me that I might be getting ‘a little too hot’ on my social media accounts,” he writes. “I respect the heck out of my dad, and when he gives me advice I take it ninety-nine point nine percent of the time. This, however, was probably the one time I decided not to listen!”
James Joyce fans are concerned about the recent sale of the Dublin townhouse that served as the setting for “The Dead.”