Simon Baker
Grow Up
The title of this collection of short stories nods to The Last Tycoon (1941), F Scott Fitzgerald’s unfinished, posthumously published novel. Like Fitzgerald, Jay McInerney has always written about the tragic allure of glamour and wealth, and the terrible acts that people are capable of when they see something they want. This volume is filled with writers, producers and bankers (many of whom have escaped to New York from provincial backgrounds) existing on a diet of parties, drugs and illicit trysts, and in each tale someone is causing pain to someone close.
Its key theme is miscommunication between couples. In almost every story the reader can see that the problems besetting the characters arise from words that are either held back or misunderstood. In ‘Invisible Fences’,
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'The trouble seems to be that we are not asked to read this author, reading being a thing of the past. We are asked to decode him.'
From the archive, Derek Mahon peruses the early short fiction of Thomas Pynchon.
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'There are at least two dozen members of the House of Commons today whose names I cannot read without laughing because I know what poseurs and place-seekers they are.'
From the archive, Christopher Hitchens on the Oxford Union.
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Chuffed to be on the Curiosity Pill 2020 round-up for my @Lit_Review piece on swimming, which I cannot wait to get back to after 10+ months away https://literaryreview.co.uk/different-strokes https://twitter.com/RNGCrit/status/1351922254687383553