Cintra Wilson is a genius!

I've been looking forward to this book for a long time (here's where I first heard about it from Cintra) and it did not disappointment. This is as funny as her still-underrated novel Colors Insulting to Nature and as smart and sharp as her best political writing. I loved it and didn't want it to end! In my mind, the best sections are the ones on Beltway fashion (a must-read!), Utah and the women of the south - in some sections of the book, the integration of the old Critical Shopper columns feels a bit awkward, as they are very funny and full of aphoristic zingers but don't tend to have the depth of some of the newer analysis written specifically for the book - but it is altogether a wonderfully intelligent and funny comment on contemporary American culture.

Here's the Southern Belle bit excerpted at Salon; here's a good interview at WWD.

In bed with Raymond Williams

I was on the verge of writing B. an email earlier - "Getting into bed with Raymond Williams" - only I realized that what I really needed was a straight-up nap, not nap-pretending-to-be-reading-a-book! I have been remiss in not mentioning this here sooner - Facebook and Twitter leach energy away from this sort of announcement - but I've got a fun gig tomorrow night, joining Geoff Dyer (one of my literary heroes) and Nikil Saval (Columbia grad and author of Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace, which I haven't read yet but which I sent a copy of last year to my father, longtime "cube" occupant) for a panel discussion of a new reissue of Politics and Letters: Interviews with New Left Review.

At the Strand Bookstore, Thursday, March 26, 7pm (828 Broadway @ 12th St.).

Another thing

The aesthetics of love and hate in cultural criticism.