Complete book coverage for Sunday, July 12, 2009
Inside: Interview with Percival Everett on the occasion of his new novel I Am Not Sidney Poitier, A Bright and Guilty Place by Richard Rayner, A World I Loved by Wadad Makdisi Cortas, Exiles in the Garden: A Novel by Ward Just, Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It: Stories by Maile Meloy, Normance: A Novel by Louis-Ferdinand Celine, The Double Life is Twice as Good by Jonathan Ames, Woodstock by Brad Littleproud and Joanna Hague, Woodstock Revisited edited by Susan Reynolds
July 12, 2009
THE WRITER'S LIFE
Percival Everett, in and out of fiction
Percival Everett doesn't spend a lot of time considering his body of work. Instead, says the 52-year-old author, whose new novel "I Am Not Sidney Poitier" (Graywolf: 272 pp., $16 paper) came out last month, "I think about writing one book at a time. It's not that my books are non sequiturs -- after all, you can't hide from yourself. It's just that I know something when I start and less when I finish."
July 12, 2009
ESSAY
A mutual passion for the Middle East, and a divide
I am a Jew, but also part Palestinian, and pretty much part Lebanese. My great-grandmother, a Jew, was born in northern Palestine and grew up in Beirut. Her first language was Arabic, her second French. By the rules defining who can be called an Arab, she was one: a child of the Arabic tongue. My great-grandfather too. Another Jew, he was born in Safed and grew up in Alexandria; first language, Arabic. They married in Beirut. When they arrived at Ellis Island, in 1896, they were classified as Turks.
July 12, 2009
OFF THE SHELF
Finding inspiration across the room
"Have you ever tried Okinawan sake?"
July 12, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
'The Double Life Is Twice as Good' by Jonathan Ames
Jonathan Ames may be the closest thing our generation gets to Norman Mailer. Literally a literary pugilist -- his essay of a boxing bout with another writer is included -- he's got an ever-present, outsized sense of himself. He's willing to have adventures and chronicle them, often at the expense of his own dignity. Despite his advancing age and well-rendered perversions, he's wooed no shortage of women. And he's equally confident at fiction and nonfiction, both of which appear in this collection of short works, "The Double Life Is Twice as Good" (Scribner: 214 pp., $15 paper), Ames' eighth book.
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
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