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From Stephen Elliott
Alexander Nazaryan’s Newsweek essay about John Cheever’s home (for sale, in Ossining) is more than a real estate ad; it’s a beautiful homage to the suburbanite writer. Upon touring the house with Susan, Cheever’s daughter, Nazaryan writes:
...moreI kept asking the one question obviously worth asking—What was it like here?
The distinct quietness of Wallace Stevens’s life—modernist, insurance salesman, writer of The Emperor of Ice Cream—is almost as famous as his poetry. Now! His 1920s Colonial home is for sale in Hartford, CT. If you’re looking for a spacious new house to raise a family in, or have a vested interest in historical preservation, maybe you should buy it.
...moreRay Bradbury’s home is up for sale. You can peep the original ad here.
His three-bedroom, 2500-square-foot house, built in 1937, is painted a cheery yellow. It has three bathrooms, hardwood floors, and sits on a generously sized 9,500-square-foot lot. It is loaded with original details, the sort that were part of the texture of the author’s daily life.
...moreFamed slam poet Maggie Estep passed away suddenly in February. Over at The Billfold, Rumpus contributor Sari Botton laments the decline of the publishing industry and the need for writers like Estep to enter into real estate:
...moreIt was a little unnerving for me, learning that this accomplished writer and performer who’d once been able to earn at least a good portion of her living – sometimes all of it – from her creative output was no longer able to do so; that she was now becoming a real estate agent for real.
Real-estate company Movoto has appraised “the Burrow,” the Weasley family home in the Harry Potter series, and figured out what it would sell for in the muggle world.
The calculations are a lesson in the values of close reading, taking into account the size of the eight-person dining table in the kitchen, the difference in square-footage between the floors (the third floor is smaller than the second and fourth ones—magic), and so on.
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Ralph Sassone’s first novel explores the devastating emotional craters of first love, and the bumpy, baffling relations between the generations.
This week in New York NOON launches Issue 9 with a reading and party, a reading by notable New Yorkers of stories on their first time in New York, Maile Chapman and Ethan Nosowsky converse, Synesthesia–a game of artistic telephone–begins, and PopRally helps you silksreen record sleeves while listening to Real Estate live.
Millard Kaufman’s posthumously published novel evokes noir films of the past in the contemporary labyrinth of Los Angeles.
In New York this week Richard Price is interviewed by Philip Gourevitch, David Byrne presents Creation in Reverse, Joyce Carol Oates and Elaine Showalter chat over brunch, Tao Lin (who will also be reading at The Rumpus’s first anniversary party) and CAConrad read at The Animal Farm Reading Series, Dave Eggers at the Strand, Women of Antifolk, and the Bruce High Quality Foundation present a re-staging of the first lecture ever dedicated to the art of magic.