Word: manhattanization
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Pynchon, the one-time enfant terrible of American literature, turns 60 this May. He still refuses to give interviews or pose for photographers, but his whereabouts are now known. New York magazine reported last fall that Pynchon has been living quietly in Manhattan--an odd choice for a presumptive recluse--with his wife and young son for the past six or so years. In 1996 he attracted gossipy notice by writing the liner notes for an album by the alternative-rock band Lotion and appearing as an enthusiastic booster at some of the group's concerts. If this behavior suggests...
...April 4, students of various New York universities participated in a national protest rally in front of National Review's Manhattan headquarters. Last week, Asian-American students at Yale protested against Sullivan's presence on campus...
...operating officer, "is to make the store a good place to spend leisure time." Riggio's concept appears to be working. Superstores are expanding and multiplying (to the tune of 20% last year) and even stores whose main business isn't bookselling are aping the superstores' bibliophilic ambiance. In Manhattan's landmark Scribner's bookstore, fabled haunt of Hemingway and Fitzgerald, a Benetton branch has set up shop and begun playing host to something called the Salon, a reading series featuring such swank young writers as Daphne Merkin, whose books will be on sale amid the turtlenecks...
Unlikely as it may seem, some 700 people paid $10 each last week to get into a Manhattan auditorium and sit--or stand--through a panel discussion on "The Memoir Explosion: Novel of the '90s or Just Another Brand of Therapy?" Most attention went to two of the panelists: Frank McCourt, whose best-selling memoir, Angela's Ashes, had just the day before won a Pulitzer Prize for biography, and Kathryn Harrison, whose memoir The Kiss, also a best seller, tells of an incestuous affair between her and her father that began when she was 20. A year ago, hardly...
What is going on here? Are memoirs becoming the substitute for novels, or does their popularity simply indicate a culture sinking ever further into gossip, trivia and terminal narcissism? Last week's panelists in Manhattan addressed these questions, as panelists are prone to do, without answering them. McCourt told the crowd that he considered telling the story of his harsh Irish childhood, the subject of Angela's Ashes, in fictional form. "I attempted it, and it was awful. I am not a novelist...