Maggie Nelson joins Kate Wolf to discuss her new book Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth. It is at once a compressed record of her long struggle with chronic pain and a document of the boundless blur of the pandemic era. It combines vignettes of daily life and doctor’s visits with dreams and memories, pushing at the partition between interior and exterior, symptom and experience, containment and surrender. Nelson depicts the mysteries of pain and the vulnerability of the human body with both humor and pathos, as well as the connections that are possible even in a moment of extreme isolation.
Eric Newman and Medaya Ocher speak with writer Katie Kitamura about her recent novel, "Audition," which explores a tense, complex relationship between a middle-aged actress and a young man who may or may not be her son. The book raises questions about the roles we play, the stories we inhabit, and the many choices we make. “Audition” is LARB’s Book Club pick this month. Join in on the conversation at https://lareviewofbooks.org/
Eric Newman and Medaya Ocher speak with Andrea Long Chu about Authority a collection of previously published and new essays and criticism. Authority interrogates what it means to be a critic today, analyzing the work that the critic does in interpreting a book, film, or TV show for us as well as how the status of the critic has developed from antiquity to the present. Andrea, Medaya, and Eric talk about finding one's voice as a critic, how the critic approaches an object of analysis, and the increasingly siloed role of the full-time critic in an era of tectonic shifts in the media landscape.
Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher speak to Lynne Tillman about her latest book, Thrilled to Death, a collection of short stories selected from over four decades of her work. The stories in Thrilled to Death attest to Tillman’s range as a writer and stylist, showcasing her frenetic humor, deep psychological insight, and her innovation of the form. Ever playful and perverse, these stories cover terrains of urban existence, romantic obsession, familial entanglement, the interplay between culture—particularly film—and experience, along with the carnivalesque of American life in all of its absurdity.