Inside Jim Harrison’s life of excess
Todd Goddard’s new biography reveals a man who loved alcohol and mystery
Fiction
Tuesday
Another collection of Harper Lee’s writings arises
These pieces show the author trying her darndest to find her voice
Tuesday
Is Dan Brown finished?
The novelist’s Happy Meal plotting serves up the same constituent parts over and over
Thursday
Ali Smith’s latest novel falls flat
Gliff is a different sort of project, but still one which reveals a desire to comment on contemporary culture
Tuesday
Cahokia Jazz is enormous fun
Francis Spufford’s latest is a gorgeously rich and multilayered story, packed with gunfire, music and superstition
Sunday
Lorrie Moore explores the thin veil between life and death
It’s hard to find writers ancient or modern who have used language with a music, wit and tenderness comparable to Moore’s
Friday
Trainspotting at thirty: an interview with Irvine Welsh
‘It would be very difficult, with the homogenization of culture, to publish a book like Trainspotting now’
Monday
The Spectator’s 2022 Books of the Year
Our writers weigh in
Thursday
Dirty realists
The beauty of dirty realism is that it captures regular life in all its stupefying, and sometimes transcendent, malaise
Monday
On literary cross-dressing
The pre-woke literary world considered authorial freedom sacrosanct
Thursday
Woke Twitter is ruining literature
The ‘manuscript wish list’ prizes enforces identity politics in fiction publishing
Monday
Mart and marketing
Martin Amis has written another autobiography — sort of
Tuesday
The Stacey Abrams presidency
In her latest fiction, ‘ Selena Montgomery ’ is a viable VP pick
Thursday
On the run with Martin Luther King’s assassin
This newly translated novel by the Spanish writer Antonio Muñoz Molina is really two books, spliced together in alternating chapters. One is a deeply researched account of the squalid peregrinations of James Earl Ray, who spent two months on the run after murdering Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968. The other is a memoir charting the gradual attainment of personal and professional happiness on the part of the author himself. The reader feels confident that both protagonists will eventually arrive at their historically appointed destinies: handcuffs at Heathrow airport for Ray; a career as a celebrated author for Muñoz Molina. But considerable suspense surrounds the question of what on earth
