Greg Tate, the guitarist, cultural critic, and author of Flyboy in the Buttermilk, has died at age sixty-four. A longtime writer for the Village Voice, Tate wrote about everything from Basquiat to Eminem, and went on to cofound the Black Rock Coalition. He was first introduced to criticism by reading Amiri Baraka’s Black Music, and in his own work was known for what Hua Hsu has called his “slangy erudition.” Readers and friends remember Tate on social media, and a line he wrote in 1991: “I realized that the meaning of being Black is summed up in who comes to bury you, who gathers in your name after you’re gone, what they have to say about how you loved, and how you were loved in return.” At his music blog, Hanif Abdurraqib writes, “Today, at least, in the wreckage of this particular sadness, I would hope to be better about telling people of their brilliance while they are still among us.”
George Orwell’s estate has approved Sandra Newton’s Julia, a feminist retelling of 1984 from the perspective of Winston Smith’s lover. The novel will be published in the UK by Granta next June.
At the New Yorker, Lauren Michele Jackson considers the book edition of the New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project.” The book features essays by Bryan Stevenson, Jamelle Bouille, Ibram X. Kendi, Martha S. Jones, and others, as well as poems and short fiction by writers including Claudia Rankine and Nafissa Thompson-Spires. Jackson reflects: “In spite of all of the ugly evidence it has assembled, the 1619 Project ultimately seeks to inspire faith in the American project, just as any conventional social-studies curriculum would.”
The Winter 2021 issue of the Paris Review is out now, the first edition of the journal under its new editor Emily Stokes. In this issue: Tobi Haslett interviews Gary Indiana; John Jeremiah Sullivan interviews Annette Gordon-Reed; fiction by Annie Baker, Caleb Crain, Sterling HolyWhiteMountain; poetry by Tove Ditlevsen, Sally Wen Mao; and more.
On December 13, Cara Blue Adams will launch her debut story collection, You Never Get It Back, with Alexandra Kleeman (You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine, Something New Under the Sun) in a virtual event hosted by Greenlight Bookstore.