Richard Ford’s latest Frank Bascombe novel, Be Mine, marks Frank’s fifth and purportedly final curtain call as whimsical Everyman, shrewdly dissecting the shifting landscape of American life and his uncertain place in it.
FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: “Pick a thing up, study it, shake it, skip it across a still surface to see how much felt and lively life got baked into it,” writes Lorrie Moore in her collection, See What Can Be Done: Essays, Criticism, and Commentary.
A cult hero for the first half of his career, Cormac McCarthy is now a literary institution. As he approaches 90, he delivers two companion novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris, which fuse dizzying intellectual exploration with his trademark gift for depicting outsiders drawn unwillingly into gripping intrigues with lethal consequences.
Perpetual West, Mesha Maren’s second novel, follows a troubled couple from Appalachia to the U.S.-Mexico border on a perilous journey of self-discovery.
With Oh William!, novelist Elizabeth Strout delivers a tour de force on the mysteries of what it means to be human. Strout will appear in conversation with Susan Orlean and Ann Patchett at a virtual event on October 20 as part of the Salon@615 series.
From the Chapter 16 archive: Chattanooga-area novelist Tim Gautreaux talks about the pitfalls of regionalism, the influence of James Dickey and Flannery O’Connor, the challenges of writing short fiction, and the imperatives of religious faith.
