[UPDATE: Apparently, it's amateur hour at the New York Times. After fixing the above headline, Matt Bucher observed that The Broken Estate was not published in 1966. James Wood was then only a year old. (And, no, the above screenshot wasn't faked. I resized it to fit it into the window.)]
[UPDATE 2: More errors in the piece. "More important, the move to a small town seemed to stimulate his memories of Shillington and his creation of its fictional counterpart, Ollington." It's Olinger. Also, John Updike was interviewed by the Paris Review in 1968, not 1967. Also, it's Terrorist, not The Terrorist. It should be "outsized talents," not "outsize talents." Good Christ, don't they employ copy editors and fact checkers at the Gray Lady?]
[UPDATE 3: The Gray Lady has fixed these errors, without "regretting the error." In the haste of my horror, I added an extra L to Olinger -- as pointed out by a pedantic commenter named Albert. This has been fixed. I regret the error.]
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
You’re joking.
Maybe their autocorrect function doesn’t recognize “Updike”?
actually, it’s Olinger (one L). and “outsize” is an acceptable form of the adjective.