The view from above
That’s the view from the Soho House in Los Angeles, with downtown LA off to the southeast. I talked to James Ellroy there yesterday afternoon for a lovely book club…
Category Archives: authors
Blue penises, brutality and boring sentences
If I had a feeling of deja-vu when I read other pieces about Bret Easton Ellis, who seemed to go through exactly the same routine with each interviewer, people (on…
The Bret Easton Ellis Meets the Press routine
In late May, I went to Bret Easton Ellis’ apartment to talk to him for a feature for the Los Angeles Times (it’s in Sunday’s paper). I’d arranged to be…
Talking to John Edgar Wideman
When I heard MacArthur Genius, National Book Award nominee John Edgar Wideman was doing a book with self-publisher Lulu, I was more than a little surprised. Then when I learned…
Oh, I’m the book critic
Jennifer Weiner just called me a book critic, and she didn’t mean it in a nice way. Weiner, of course, is the author of a heap of books, including Good…
Talking to Rebecca Skloot
I met Rebecca Skloot in New York last fall, when after a National Book Critics Circle event I had little business attending, I tagged along with a group of former…
Joshua Ferris on The Unnamed
When I first reached Joshua Ferris to talk to him for the Barnes & Noble Review, my call surprised him. “I’m driving!” he said, and before he got pulled over…
