Four Good Things: Women Serve Notice
1) One of the best things that's happened in publishing this year is NYRB Classics re-releasing Renata Adler's Speedboat and Pitch Dark. In these brilliant and innovative novels, Adler mixes deadpan wit with cringe-worthy rhetorical jabs and creates a prose style distinctively her own. Hers is a raw emotional fragility and hardened fortitude, reminding many of Elizabeth Hardwick and David Foster Wallace. We're so happy these novels are available once again. (For more on the Renata Adler "Renaissance," see the Guardian . . .)
2) A fantastic interview with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (author most recently of Americanah): "I wish there was a bit more understanding of the many blacks, and the many sort of permutations of blackness. I would like every black immigrant who comes here to take a course in African American history. But speaking of stereotypes, the African stereotypes are very easily absorbed in the African American community as well. I remember how amusing I found it that African Americans were shocked that I can speak English. Because, you know, you came from Africa." (for more, see the Boston Review . . .)