Jennifer Egan on the Literary Pleasures of the Concept Album

Jennifer Egan on the Literary Pleasures of the Concept Album

Jennifer Egan’s new novel, “The Candy House,” one of the most anticipated books of the year, has just been published. It is related—not a sequel exactly, but something like a sibling—to her Pulitzer Prize-winning “A Visit from the Goon Squad,” from 2010. That earlier book was largely about the music business, and Egan, a passionate music fan, has described its unusual structure as having been inspired by the concept albums of her youth. “The very nature of a concept album is that it tells one big story in small pieces that sound very different from each other and that sort of collide,” she tells David Remnick. “I thought, How would I do that narratively? I ask myself that all the time.” We asked Egan to speak about three concept albums that influenced her, and she picked The Who’s “Quadrophenia,” about a disaffected, working-class mod in the nineteen-sixties; Patti Smith’s “Horses”; and Eminem’s “Recovery.” Plus, a story about two young boys, obsessed with basketball cards, who schemed to get a rare triptych card from a third friend. Decades later, their ill-gotten prize might be worth a lot of money—but whose money is it? The staff writer Charles Bethea looks at the grown-up consequences of a childhood prank.

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Patrick Radden Keefe on “London Falling,” His Book About a Teen-Ager’s Mysterious Life and Death

Patrick Radden Keefe on “London Falling,” His Book About a Teen-Ager’s Mysterious Life and Death

When Patrick Radden Keefe was living in London while shooting the TV adaptation of his book “Say Nothing,” he heard about a teen-ager who fell from a luxurious apartment tower in mysterious circumstan...

21 Huhti 19min

A Genocide Scholar Asks “What Went Wrong” in Israel

A Genocide Scholar Asks “What Went Wrong” in Israel

Omer Bartov is an Israeli professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University. He grew up in a Zionist home and served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces, but he has long been conc...

17 Huhti 39min

Anna Wintour as Vogue Icon

Anna Wintour as Vogue Icon

Anna Wintour graces the cover of Vogue’s May issue alongside her theatrical double: Meryl Streep in the role of Miranda Priestly, from “The Devil Wears Prada,” whose much-anticipated sequel comes out ...

14 Huhti 38min

Sam Altman’s Trust Issues at OpenAI

Sam Altman’s Trust Issues at OpenAI

At the end of February, OpenAI’s C.E.O., Sam Altman, made headlines by swiftly cutting a deal with the Pentagon for his company to replace Anthropic, which had balked at the Trump Administration’s bid...

10 Huhti 49min

Pick Three: Spring Sports News

Pick Three: Spring Sports News

The New Yorker staff writer Louisa Thomas, who writes the Sporting Scene column, talks with David Remnick about the biggest basketball stories this season: how LeBron James embraced a new late-career ...

7 Huhti 14min

How Donald Trump’s War on Iran Helps Vladimir Putin’s War on Ukraine

How Donald Trump’s War on Iran Helps Vladimir Putin’s War on Ukraine

In 2021, when Olga Rudenko and other journalists launched the English-language news outlet the Kyiv Independent, they were committed to making a publication that wouldn’t face political pressure from ...

3 Huhti 36min

A Former Federal Prosecutor on Why He Quit Donald Trump’s Department of Justice

A Former Federal Prosecutor on Why He Quit Donald Trump’s Department of Justice

Thousands of federal prosecutors have been fired or have resigned from their roles since Pam Bondi took over as Attorney General. She has made no secret of weaponizing the Justice Department to pursue...

31 Maalis 22min

John Lithgow on the Controversial Authors Roald Dahl and J. K. Rowling

John Lithgow on the Controversial Authors Roald Dahl and J. K. Rowling

The new play “Giant,” on Broadway, dramatizes the scandal around Roald Dahl, the beloved children’s-book author who, in the nineteen-eighties, began making antisemitic statements and invoking stereoty...

27 Maalis 28min

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