Posts From Author: the guardian

Curtain Call: The Ink Runs Dry

What happens when The Ink Runs Dry? Fortunately, the House of SpeakEasy has a talking cure. We’re delighted to welcome Jonathan Alter, David Gilbert, Christopher Mason, Jay Parini and Amanda Vaill to City Winery for another Seriously Entertaining literary cabaret, taking in tortured geniuses, presidential candidates, messiahs and more. Read on, dear friends, to meet this month’s line-up. Jonathan Alter is an award-winning author, reporter, columnist, and television analyst. A veteran of nine presidential elections, his latest work has dissected the Obama White House, first in The Promise: President Obama, Year One (2010) and most recently in The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies (2013), which we reviewed here. His other books include The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope (2007). Here Alter talks to the Washington Post about The Center Holds. “He’s very clear about needing to be president of all the people, and not the president of Black America. But he doesn’t like to talk about that too much in public… Because he’s African-American, the president can’t swing at every pitch that he wants to. Otherwise he plays into the hands of his enemies…” David Gilbert is the author of two novels, The Normals (2004) and & Sons (2013). The latter, a […]
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Re Martin Amis

Martin Amis was doubled on Saturday night at the New School. He was appearing as part of the tenth annual PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, established by his great friend Salman Rushdie, who had a front-row seat for the occasion. Stage left was the real Amis, head cocked and battle-ready; opposite him sat interviewer and critic John Freeman; and between them was actor Anatol Yusef, who spoke only the historical Amis’s words, taken from interviews conducted since the 1970s in Interview magazine. The concept was simple but rather brilliant: Freeman would interview Amis-past and -present interactively, with Amis-present annotating, approving or contradicting his earlier selves. It was fascinating to watch. Starting with The Rachel Papers (1973), Amis’s writing was inevitably compared with that of his father, Kingsley, whose most famous books include comic classic Lucky Jim and The Old Devils, winner of the 1986 Booker Prize. “I still think it delegitimises me in a weird way, having a writer-father,” said Amis-present, who’s written thirteen novels, several collections of short fiction and a wealth of criticism and social commentary. “I’m like Prince Charles, who talks with this sort of ex cathedra authority based on absolutely nothing at all. With me, everyone slightly suspects I got […]
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Curtain Call: In Case of Emergency

A state of emergency is declared. You fly tonight. What do you take with you? Clothes? Thermos? Hatchet? Naaah: books, of course. Fortunately you know of a safehouse nearby. A safehouse by the name of SpeakEasy. That’s right, comrades, there’s a Seriously Entertaining way out of this crisis. Between our six guests next week, we have everything you need to survive In Case of Emergency. Don’t have your ticket yet? Fear not, there’s still a few left here. Your checklist: 1. Amor Towles. Author of the marvellous Manhattan merry-go-round Rules of Civility, which we reviewed a few weeks back, and its ebook follow-up Eve in Hollywood. Here’s Towles talking about the great American photographer Walker Evans and the genesis of his debut novel: 2. Evie Wyld‘s new book, All the Birds, Singing, was just published in the US. When it came out in the UK last year, the Guardian said that it “should enhance her reputation as one of our most gifted novelists”. We took a look at her debut, After the Fire, a Still Small Voice, earlier this week. In this clip, Wyld reads the opening to All the Birds, Singing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bn4sDbm3k8 3. J.D. McClatchy‘s new collection Plundered Hearts just came out to ecstatic reviews — the […]
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Kate Mosse and Remaking History

Kate Mosse has been a major fixture on the British literary scene for two decades. In 1996 she established the Women’s Prize for Fiction, which has done great things for women writers around the world, including past winners Lionel Shriver, Marilynne Robinson, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Zadie Smith. She is also a major novelist in her own right. In the last ten years, her award-winning, bestselling Languedoc trilogy, set mostly in the south of France but across many centuries, has earned her international recognition. Last month, she was our guest at the Seriously Entertaining show “Are You For Sale?” Mosse is something of a history buff. Best known for her historical fiction, she has also written straight history (a book-length reflection on fifty years of the Chichester Festival Theatre) and many of her articles focus on her love of the genre. What most seems to inspire her is the the way in which historical artefacts can give us access to the past and to the people who live there. In an article for the Guardian in 2010, she wrote about one of her finds at a car-boot sale near Carcassonne, where she and her family spend part of the year: When I opened [the […]
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Jay McInerney’s The Good Life

In a 2005 article for the Guardian entitled “The uses of invention”, Jay McInerney set out to counter the prevalent concern that literature was no longer up to the task, following 9/11, of processing world events. His contribution to the proof was The Good Life (2006), a novel set in the autumn of 2001 in the bedrooms of wealthy Manhattanites dealing with the aftermath of the destruction downtown. It was McInerney’s seventh novel and a sequel of sorts to 1992’s Brightness Falls. The book’s central insight is given to Luke McGavock around halfway through: “Personally is maybe the only perspective we have.” Like much of the fiction published since 9/11, McInerney’s novel is not principally about terrorism or the fall of the World Trade Center. Instead, it examines the effects of the attacks on individuals. His characters’ lives are all balanced somewhat precariously before September 11; the subject of the book becomes how such an epochal event can change perspectives in unforeseeable ways. Luke is something of an avatar for McInerney, who also spent the weeks following 9/11 working in a soup kitchen downtown, and he is occasionally blessed with an almost authorial clairvoyance. At a benefit at Central Park Zoo: The women were beautiful in their gowns, or at least glamorous […]
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“Do You Think I Should Do A Human Interest Story?”: Steve Coogan, Martin Sixsmith and Philomena Lee

JANE I think what they did to you was evil. PHILOMENA No I don’t like that word. MARTIN No — evil’s good. (They stare at him) Story wise. You can read Philomena: A Screenplay by Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope, based on the book by Martin Sixsmith, on the Weinstein Company website here. As with most published screenplays, there are some discrepancies between this and the final film.  We’re extremely excited to be welcoming Steve Coogan at our next Seriously Entertaining event, “This Is Not A Man”, on February 24 (tickets on sale here), and delighted to be able to congratulate him on his Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar nomination for Philomena! Here we take a look at his award-winning work on the movie. Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope’s screenplay for Philomena (dir. Stephen Frears, The Weinstein Company, 2013), was adapted from Martin Sixsmith‘s nonfiction book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee (Macmillan, 2009). It’s one of six Best Picture nominees at this year’s Academy Awards based on true events but one of only two (the other being The Wolf of Wall Street) that actively interrogates its “real-life” nature. Indeed, I’d argue that what makes Coogan and Pope’s screenplay so powerful is the tension between the simple “human interest” story Sixsmith sets out to […]
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The Luminous Uma Thurman

In 1991 the New York Times marked the “earth-shattering news” that Pauline Kael was retiring by interviewing her. The great iconoclast of film criticism, whose put-downs made her unpopular with publicists but delighted readers of the New Yorker for more than twenty years, nevertheless found much to admire in the latest crop of Hollywood stars. She listed among her favourites Tim Robbins, Annette Bening, Uma Thurman, John Cusack and Wesley Snipes. That this is a list of some of the most significant screen actors of the two decades since Kael’s retirement is a testament to her uncannily splendid taste. That it features one of the special guest hosts for the House of SpeakEasy’s opening gala — Uma Thurman — is merely delightful coincidence! On the night of the gala, Uma Thurman will be leading guests through “The Tip of My Tongue”. The Oscar-nominated actress will read out selections from three mystery books, all carefully chosen to reflect the theme of the evening (“Plays With Matches”),  and invite the audience to identify the title, the author, and the decade in which the books were written. The winner will receive signed books from the authors appearing at the gala. Thurman began her acting career at seventeen, four […]
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