"I read the way one might stroll. … I feel myself to be a sacred trespasser…"
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
In this new Encounter, Andrés Hax discovers a writer and a filmmaker who jolt his memories of place and help define his relationship with fictional locations.
"It is a deep pleasure to read an author without any critical preconceptions because you are absolutely free to live inside of the work, to come to it on your own terms, to evaluate it as something new."
Literature reminds us that we should never be afraid to look at something as though we’re witnessing it for the first time, however well we think we know it. This is one reason great books offer endless company and sanctuary. Each expedition into them reveals new vistas: the book becomes more intelligent as we grow alongside it.
Cormac McCarthy's debut novel, The Orchard Keeper, turned fifty this year. To celebrate its anniversary, we invited Booker Prize-winning novelist John Banville, Weatherford Award-wining poet and Tennessee native Jesse Graves, and the Buenos Aires-based writer Andrés Hax to discuss their experiences of reading McCarthy through the years.
It takes a special person to open a bookstore, someone with a mix of optimism, compassion, endless curiosity about the lives of others and, perhaps, a bit of delusion.
In the five decades since Mary Stuart Kellogg and her sister, Rhoda Norman, established Maple Street Book Shop, generations of readers have embraced the little wood-frame sanctuary as a second home.
In celebration of Mary Kellogg’s life and her gift to the New Orleans literary landscape, novelist Christine Wiltz reflects on this influence.
“Rebecca Solnit taught me to walk. Not in the literal sense, obviously. But it was because of Solnit that I made walking a central part of my life.” —Nick Gadd
This installment of Bibliophoria features novelist and essayist Nick Gadd (of Melbourne Circle) on Rebecca Solnit’s wonderful books about walking and how they've altered his path.
Earlier this year, Peter Cooley became Louisiana’s newest poet laureate. The Detroit native who calls New Orleans home has, over the past decades, become a beloved figure in the fabric of Louisiana literature. In this installment of On Air, Peter Cooley reads his post-Katrina poems from Night Bus to the Afterlife.
"It was a lesson, like he was saying: remember, remember, remember. Don't let anything pass unnoticed. Get it down. You might need it later." —Andrés Hax
In celebration of the life and work of James Salter, and to mark this week's publication of Conversations with James Salter, Andrés Hax offers a remembrance.
We were thrilled to share a few minutes with Mary Norris, comma queen and longtime proofreader at The New Yorker, during her recent appearance at the Louisiana Book Festival in Baton Rouge.
“I didn’t set out to be a comma queen. The first job I ever had, the summer I was fifteen, was checking feet at a public pool in Cleveland.” —Mary Norris, Between You and Me
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