If ancient Rome is more your bag than medieval fantasy/sci-fi, then allow us to recommend this pow-wow on Emperor August (nee Gaius Octavius), featuring the inimitable Daniel Mendelsohn—whose expansive critical capacities have bent upon both the Odyssey and Mad Men. Mendelsohn will be discussing Augustus, the third ofStoner author John Williams’ great novels. Published in 1972, the book has(...)
Daphne Merkin may have achortle-inducing last name, but her often painfully personal articles for publications like The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine tended to be more mortifying than mirthful. Subjects like her battle with depression, her spanking fetish, and her years of therapy have made up a good chunk of Merkin’s oeuvre, a fact belied by(...)
Discover an Andy Warhol who is “anything but the removed observer of most popular accounts” with critic, poet and CUNY professor Wayne Koestenbaum, whose writing style has been described as “an impossible lovechild from a late-night, drunken three-way between Joan Didion, Roland Barthes, and Susan Sontag.” He’ll be joined by Stephen Koch, author of Stargazer:(...)