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While Jonathan Safran Foer just made New York Press’s “50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers” list, Ms. Krauss would likely beg to differ; she married him. What does this have to do with Krauss’s The History of Love, published just a month after Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close? Quite a bit, it turns out, when … Read more

A new Ann Beattie book is no longer the event it once was, which is something of a shame. She’s been kicking out such consistently accomplished fiction for so long now that it’s become easy to take her for granted. When she first made her name with a series of New Yorker stories in the … Read more

Year after year, this lecture series brings in some of literature’s heaviest hitters, and yet somehow maintains a surprisingly low profile. Isabel Allende, May’s featured author, is a former journalist and the niece of slain Chilean President Salvador Allende, who was overthrown in a CIA-assisted coup in 1973. Since her first novel, 1985’s The House … Read more

Before there was David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell, or even, for crying out loud, Dave Barry, there was Fran Lebowitz, a caustic, chain-smoking New Yorker who came on like a cross between Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker. In the seventies, Lebowitz was nothing less than a Manhattan celebrity; her Social Studies and Metropolitan Life were best … Read more

No other living American writer can drop us into the wild, wild West or a Texas countryside like Rick Bass. Writing with empathy and great humility, he makes characters we can touch; we meet them in Montana valleys or while trespassing on a Texas ranch. His newest effort, The Diezmo, combines those qualities with gorgeous … Read more

Aimee Mann has made several unusual but ultimately inspired moves in her career, including writing the stunning soundtrack to the film Magnolia and co-founding United Musicians, an organization that allows artists to retain copyright ownership of their work. Musically, with her smoky jazz voice and sharp, melodic pop sensibilities, she can hardly do wrong with … Read more

Soul Coughing disbanded five years ago, and frontman Mike Doughty seems sublimely content with the way his life has progressed since. He’s traded the psychotic sample stylings of Soul Coughing, as well as his moniker, M., for more traditional songwriting that he calls “small rock” and for collaborations with the likes of Dave Matthews and … Read more

In an attempt to reach younger audiences, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra began offering Saturday morning children’s concerts at deep discounts. Progressive. Now it’s presenting a new work, commissioned along with other chamber orchestras, for violin, chamber orchestra, and jazz saxophone. Very progressive. In the scramble to be king of the tenor-sax hill, Joe Lovano … Read more

Broadway has been cluttered lately with Hollywood actors living out their little fantasies. We like them well enough onscreen, but these girls and boys can’t really sing or dance, and they don’t eat enough–which makes a difference to those who believe that good curves can really make a show. Sassy, classy Broadway broads like Gypsy … Read more

One of the more uplifting moments during last month’s worldwide festival of death was Stevie Wonder’s performance at lawyer Johnnie Cochran’s funeral. His appearance made it painfully obvious that millions of pilgrims in Rome had been shortchanged by the papal entertainment committee. It also reminded us that while he is always handy for an all-star … Read more